Twenty years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch. The entire crew was killed: Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe.

Former astronaut John Glenn, a U.S. Senator at the time, said what we were all thinking: that we always knew a day like this would come, but we always hoped it would not be this day.

This is a sad time of year for NASA. Yesterday, January 27, was the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Apollo 1 launchpad fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. Next Wednesday, February 1, is the third anniversary of the breakup on re-entry of shuttle Columbia, which killed Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon.

Our astronauts are truly the brightest and the best this country has to offer. The things that NASA tries to do are fundamentally difficult, and fundamentally risky. The astronauts are ready to face great risk in order to achieve great things, but they have no intention of throwing their lives away carelessly, and we must never expect them to do so.

Let’s remember the dead astronauts, and honor their memory in the only way that matters: by carrying on their important work with the utmost care for the lives of the living astronauts.

We always know that days like those will come. When the next tragedy comes, as it surely will, let it never be because we valued the lives of our best people too lightly.

Update: Via Slashdot, MSNBC has an eight-part article about the Challenger disaster, written by correspondent Jay Barbree.

Cartoonist Ruben Bolling is funny, but not in the same way as Ann Coulter.

He says, “You’ll be surprised to find out how helpful it is to have N.S.A. agents eavesdrop on your conversations,” he brings us Dick Cheney’s Philosophical Thought Experiment Legislation, and he compares Presidents Goofus and Gallant.

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What a kidder that Ann Coulter is:

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter, speaking at a traditionally black college, joked that Justice John Paul Stevens should be poisoned.

Coulter had told the Philander Smith College audience Thursday that more conservative justices were needed on the Supreme Court to change the current law on abortion.

Stevens is one of the court’s most liberal members.

“We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee,” Coulter said. “That’s just a joke, for you in the media.”

Ann Coulter is a laugh riot. I’ll bet she cracks ’em up at airports, the White House and the Capitol building when she jokes about carrying a bomb, too. Man, that stuff never gets old. Any old liberal fuddy-duddy who doesn’t find Ann’s death threats funny just doesn’t have a sense of humor, and should probably be taken out and shot.

Just kidding. Heh.