I am praying that everything goes well, but despite being a space-fanatic since childhood, I would not go for a ride on a shuttle these days.
I'm sorry, I just don't trust the things anymore.
You have every reason not to trust!!!
This is a view I don't understand. It's like the MSM yarn about the age of the shuttle fleet. So what! Look, it works! It's not flawless but nothing is going to be when you're doing something so fantastically complex. Challenger would've been avoided if it hadn't flown when it was clearly too cold. Changes were made, problem resolved. Columbia would've been ok (we believe) if they hadn't moved to the non-freon foam process and, at the least, put in the safety thinking you or I would immediately think about if for some reason an orbiter *cannot* return to Earth safely. The Columbia problem was not about the orbiter and this foam problem is with a tank that is brand *new* with each flight, not reused like the orbiter and boosters.