I was at college, walking up the stairs to my dormroom when I heard about it. I spent the rest of the day glued to my little TV in our room.
As I watched the video that was being replayed over and over, one moment struck me: The twin trails of smoke from the booster rockets looked like the wide-spread arms of a giant in the sky.
It was immediately obvious that there would be no survivors. I cried, and prayed that they never had a chance to know what happened, and feeling awful for all the school kids watching the teacher take off, on TVs at schools around the world.
The cause was later determined to be a simple, small, faulty O-ring. It would be months later before any human remains were recovered, found at the bottom of the ocean.
I have been to Florida just one time. In July 2011, I got the idea to take a few days off from work and fly down to Florida to see the final shuttle launch. I'm glad that I did it but coming up with a strategy to get from the hotel to the launch site was rough. I was close to renting a car to get there because none of the taxi companies were willing to do it and there was zero public transportation (OR SIDEWALKS).