Was on my way to work heading east toward TIA in Tampa, listening to the launch on the radio, saw it climbing straight up 140 miles to the east of Tampa, into that incredibly crystal blue, cloudless sky, then saw all the squirrelly vapor trails breaking off, and told myself "Self, we've seen about a dozen of these things go up, and that just ain't right". Four hours later, the contrails were still clearly visible in that windless, cold, deep blue sky.
NASA is very good, but sometimes too arrogant in their confidence to refuse to go on manufactures and contractors advice. As bad as Columbia disintegrating on re-entry and the flight director refusing to even think that a chunk of ice on lift off could cause such a thing to happen the following week.
A friend and I were on the cape about four miles away from the launch pad for the third flight, and the first night launch in late August, where the O-ring was about three seconds from failure, sop it was a known potential problem. That never came out as far as I can tell, until after Challenger.
What an awesome spectacle a night launch is from that close in.
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