The Smithsonian article on John Young that you linked to is a good one. The only John Young quote they didn't include that I wish they had was his response to the proposal to make STS-1 an on purpose RTLS abort: "Let's not practice Russian roulette."
Also "RTLS requires continuous miracles interspersed with acts of God to be successful."[1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171208090538/http://www.tested...