...for the loss of the first-built space shuttle, Columbia, and her crew.

My heart goes out to the families and friends of the crew lost.

We should each save a special thought for the NASA and government personnel whose job it will be over the next months to pick through the debris to determine what went wrong. I do not envy those people their task, and it is a vitally important one if the remaining space shuttles are to fly again.

I was about 12 years old when the Challenger disaster occurred. I didn't hear about it until I was on the bus to go home and one of the 8th graders had heard about it somehow. I found my mom and brother three inches from the TV, watching the disaster happen repeatedly in slow-motion on every network channel (pre-cable, mind you).

The summer after Challenger exploded, I went to the Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. (Some of you may know it by the name "Space Camp." Different age groups are in different programs: space camp for 5th grade and under, space academy for middle school age.) The specter of the accident loomed large over the facility, and when we spoke of Challenger's crew it was in the hushed, reverent tones reserved for funeral homes and cathedrals. In a way, the space center was the cathedral for every 13-year-old there, a mixture of the holiness of science, the spirit of adventure inherent in every "Star Trek" episode we'd ever seen, and a new knowledge that Things Go Wrong.

And that week, we learned exactly how hard NASA works to ensure that if something does go wrong, there's a backup. NASA creates backups upon backups upon Plans B, C and D. These are the world's foremost experts on identifying every possible thing that can go wrong, and then think of a way to prevent it. And our hungry pre-teen minds and hands learned them and practiced them, eagerly dreaming that one day they'd let us near the real shuttle.

Of course, most of us didn't get anywhere close to our childhood "star Trek"-induced fantasies of working for NASA. Most of us became computer programmers, teachers, lawyers, accountants, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, spies (and in my case, a few of the above). But each of us, when no one's looking, still look at the stars see the possibilities in them, and in ourselves, that adulthood hasn't quite been able to shake off.

Tonight, like a lot of people, I'll be looking at the stars. And I will be silently saluting the men and women of Columbia who went where I didn't, and thank them for going. Because space is still the final frontier, and frontiers are dangerous places no matter how many backups you create. But someone has to be first, someone has to go where other people can't or won't, and these men and women went there and lost their lives in a time in our history when no one is paying attention to the space program.

So take a minute over the next few days to pray for the loss of the Columbia and her crew, and take a minute more to look at the stars.