Michael J. Smith
Dick Scobee
Ronald McNair
Ellison Onizuka
Christa McAuliffe
Gregory Jarvis
Judith Resnik
The meek shall inherit the earth – those who dare, the stars.
I’d go up on the shuttle if I had a 50/50 chance of coming back. I have two things in my life I wish I could do, and never will. One is go into space, and the other is to be the person who lights the torch at the Olympics.
Thanks, silenus, for posting this.
I’d go too with a 50/50 chance, i wonder how many people feel like Baker and me and wish they could go to space and know they never will (I am angry about that since age 10 
)
Missed the edit window, wanted to add:
I remember I was 8 when the Challenger accident happened, and my school mates for some reason decided that meant that ALL astronauts died , always. They were gobsmacked when I insisted that I still wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up, Alas, it was not to be
Ronald Reagan, 31 Jan. 1986
Thanks for the reminder, silenus.
I’d go, too, or I would have before I had kids. But I get motion sickness very easily and I used to be extremely near-sighted, so I have always known that I could never be an astronaut. Sigh.
There’s a book called Riding Rockets, by Mike Mullane, that is a very good account of the astronaut world from this time. Well, actually I’m sure there’s several books, but Mullane’s is very enjoyable. He went through training and was close friends with some of those who died that day.
That’s going on my wall. Thanks.
Apollo 1 burned on the pad, on January 27, 1967.
Challenger burned on liftoff, on January 28, 1986.
Columbia burned on reentry, February 1, 2003.
This is a bad memory week for NASA.
Yes, I remember them all.
But we must keep going.
I once saw an editorial type cartoon. A ladder stretched out into space, into the dark sky filled with stars. Each rung of the ladder had a name on it, US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, who have died in accidents.