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American Morning

Fixing the Shuttle; Crisis in Niger

Aired August 02, 2005 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I think that's the astronaut practicing the repairs on the shuttle, as a matter of fact, right there.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I think they're fixing the building across the street from Radio City.

M. O'BRIEN: No, you can practice it there. Just pulling in some gap fillers right now, as a matter of fact. No.

S. O'BRIEN: No, not happening. Welcome back, everybody.

M. O'BRIEN: I think people knew that. They knew that wasn't true.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, I couldn't tell what it was, what we were pulling out, until we saw Radio City, kind of gave us a clue.

M. O'BRIEN: There you go.

S. O'BRIEN: It's just about half past the hour. We're going to talk this morning about the risks of this upcoming shuttle repair mission.

M. O'BRIEN: OK, that's a real astronaut now.

S. O'BRIEN: That's what you were looking for. The astronaut who's going to do it holds the record for space walks.

M. O'BRIEN: Actually the astronaut we're going to speak to holds the record. The one who's going to do it, it's only his third space walk ever.

S. O'BRIEN: It's usually risky.

M. O'BRIEN: But he's a quality guy, that Steve Robinson, and he's been well trained. That's not a live picture. That's not a live picture. No, he's saying it's a live picture. That was from yesterday's space walk when they were working on some other things. They successfully did put that new gyroscope on the space station, which was a good thing.

But the big thing is, of course, fixing the shuttle so it's safe and sound for reentry. They've got those -- I've been calling it shuttle stubble. They need to shave the shuttle stubble. There's a live picture. That's the Destiny Laboratory, and that's the crew. Everybody wearing the same shirt, because that's what crews do, right? And they've been doing a series of news conferences and media events this morning.

S. O'BRIEN: The concern is that there's the stubble or little things hanging off, that those actually could get overheated and cause a similar problem to what they had with Columbia, right?

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, you want smooth airflow when you're coming in at Mach 25 to Mach 18. That's pretty fast, and need a bubble of air to protect the shuttle, and if you have a little bump, it creates a little disturbance and that sort of blow torches the spot. So that's the drill.

S. O'BRIEN: That's a huge risk.

M. O'BRIEN: That's best I can do on explanation. I'm a history major. What can I do?

Carol Costello is here.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm just laughing because that reminded me of the powerful Mach 5, you know, from Speed racer, because they're going at Mach what?

S. O'BRIEN: Twenty five.

M. O'BRIEN: Eighteen to 25, yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Way faster than Speed Racer.

M. O'BRIEN: There you go. So be careful.

COSTELLO: I'm sure they will.

Good morning, everyone.

I have a news update for you now. Dignitaries from all over the world are paying their respects to Saudi Arabia's late King Fahd. We have live pictures to show you. This is a prayer service that is under way at a Riyadh mosque. The ceremony will be followed by a public procession to a nearby cemetery where Fahd will be buried in a simple unmarked grave. I believe we have taped pictures of people gathering around. And you can see King Fahd's coffin there. Of course, we'll be following this as it happens.

I'm sure Nic Robertson will have an update for us a little later.

Police in Iraq say at least eight people were killed in a series of drive-by shootings this morning. A U.S. military convoy coming under fire as well in Central Baghdad. Nearly 30 people wounded in the suicide car bombing.

Near Houston, Texas, a four alarm fire broke out at a residence for the elderly. Officials were able to evacuate the building, but at least four people hurt. Things are said to be under control right now.

And President Bush is set to sign the Central America Free Trade Agreement, also known as CAFTA. The deal was narrowly approved in Congress last week, after last-minute lobbying fro the White House. It lifts trade barriers between the United States and six countries. CNN will have live coverage of the signing ceremony that will come your way at 11:25 Eastern.

Back to you, Speed Racer.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you, Trixie. No problem.

In space, a first-ever repair operation is scheduled tomorrow for the Shuttle Discovery. That's when a space-walking astronaut, one Steve Robinson, will try to remove two pieces of filler material that is dangling from the shuttle's underbelly. The cloth is -- it's kind of stiffened cloth. It's used to fill -- it's like something you'd use for hemming things, or something like that. Cloth is used to fill gaps between Discovery's thermal tiles. NASA officials are worried the cloth filler could endanger the spacecraft during re-entry by creating some hotspots.

Earlier this morning, the shuttle's crew talks about tomorrow's planned space walk.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EILEEN COLLINS, DISCOVERY COMMANDER: We're very confident because we have done a full inspection, and we've looked down with photos from the (INAUDIBLE) maneuver to the FN photos and all the laser inspections. We are highly confident in this entry, and we have one unknown left, and that's the gap filler that we hope to pull out tomorrow. And after we've done that, I think we're going to have a very clean entry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: Tomorrow's space walk will be the third of the shuttle's current voyage. Discovery is due to return to earth early Monday morning. Now joining me now is an astronaut who is the dean of all space-walking astronauts. He holds the record for the number of space walks in the United States, a total of nine. This man knows his space walks. Jerry Ross is chief astronaut at NASA's engineering and safety center.

Good to see you, Jerry. You're looking good.

JERRY ROSS, NASA ASTRONAUT: Good to see you. If I could see you, I'll wave to you.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, yes, you know, if you could see me, you'd see me holding up a piece of tile here. This is not one that Discovery left behind. This is just a spare that I got a hold of. And what I want to show you is look how easily it kind of flakes off there. These things are extremely fragile. They're amazing in their ability to withstand heat. But this is what leads me to the question, Jerry, any time you're near these things, you've got to be real careful. How concerned are you about getting that close to the thermal heat shield? ROSS: Actually we worked through this quite diligently, Miles, and we're not all that concerned. We've designed the task so that Steve Robinson will have a very solid work base to work from. He can rest his gloved hand against the tiles, if he needs to, to brace himself. We, quite frankly, expect these gap fillers to come out with very little force, in the neighborhood of a couple pounds. So we think it shouldn't a difficult task.

M. O'BRIEN: So a couple pounds, he just pulls it out. They fashioned a few cutting instruments using forceps and kind of a saw and so forth, if need be, but you think he'll be able to pull it out, and that will be the end of it. That makes it sound very simple. It isn't simple, right?

ROSS: Well, it's only simple in concept. The execution can become difficult, but we've, quite frankly, think that we've worked through everything. The crew, I think, has confidence in what the ground team has put together. And we think that, even though it's a challenging concept, the actual execution should go very smoothly and hopefully very quickly.

M. O'BRIEN: And let's remind folks what the concern is here. We're talking about just tiny little bumps. We're talking on the order of an inch protrusion sticking out there. That doesn't seem like it's a big deal. But we have to remind people about what the shuttle encounters as it comes back from space. Traveling at 17,500 miles an hour, you really want a smooth surface. Explain why.

ROSS: We use what we call a laminar flow, a very smooth flow that's very close to the surface of the orbiter's underbelly to provide additional insulation. Once we trip that flow, we cause the very high temperature gases to get much closer to the tiles, and it starts to heat them up, and it soaks through and can actually weaken the aluminum structure of the orbiter to where it would no longer be flyable.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, the other thing that's perhaps on some people's minds is, if you put gap fillers in there, they're there for a reason. If you pull them out, aren't you exposing that same aluminum skin to that heat you've just been talking about?

ROSS: Well, we looked at that also, Miles. One of the gap fillers, the one that's closest to the nose of the orbiter, actually is there more for ascent conditions than it is for reentry. So we're not concerned about removing that one. The one that's a little bit further aft and not toward the starboard side, we have some concerns about, but we've looked at it, and we think that it shouldn't be an issue. It should only cause a little bit of localized heating, which is OK for reuse.

M. O'BRIEN: Let me ask you this. What's your gut? If you didn't know about this and you had flown back with these protrusions, you think the shuttle would have made it back?

ROSS: That's the unknown, and that's why we're going to go do this task tomorrow. Our modeling and our best guesses, our best engineering knowledge says that there's a potential for a problem. And since we have the tools to know that those things are there and we have developed the capabilities over the last two-and-a-half years to go do these types of maintenance actions on the belly of the orbiter, we're going to go do it. We don't want to risk the likelihood that something could happen that would be bad.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, there's an old saying ignorance is bliss, and that Comes to mind here. For years and years, the shuttle program never had the imagery that we had on this launch. And suddenly, there's all these things that have come to light. Do you think the shuttle program has been more lucky than good?

ROSS: I think there's probably an element of that. We have probably dodged some bullets in the past. We've seen some localized heating effects on the belly the orbiter and some tiles that were damaged during ascent. And certainly, we probably would have wanted to go fix those things had we had the capability to detect it and to affect the fixes in the first place.

M. O'BRIEN: Jerry Ross, the dean of space-walking astronauts, joining us from steamy Houston, Texas.

Thanks, as always, for your time -- Soledad.

ROSS: Good to talk to you, Miles.

S. O'BRIEN: The United Nations says that $4 million is needed right now to help fight the famine in Niger. The crisis is enormous. More than three million people are in danger of starving, and some aid is getting through, though, to the drought stricken country. Anderson Cooper is there. He's seeing what relief workers are up against.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This is what desperation looks like. In a small village in Southern Niger, hundreds of mothers gather with their hungry children hoping somebody will help them.

Hunger is nothing new in Niger. Every year there's a several- month gap. They call it the hungry season between when the crops have been planted and they're actually harvested. What happened is with the drought last year, the crops simply didn't come up this year so that hungry season is longer and more intense than it's been.

That's why Niger is in crisis. Aid agencies say the severe food shortage has put some 3.6 million Nigerians at risk of starvation. Most of them children.

Some of the worst cases aren't necessarily in the big cities in Niger, they're in smaller, outlying villages. The relief groups come to villages like this one and offer screening. Mothers bring their children. The worst cases are brought back to the city, back to the hospital.

At this village screening, however, the crowds are simply too big.

It's a bit overwhelming when you first come to a center like this because there are just so many people, so many mothers who have brought their children. Not all of them are starving. Not all of them are severely malnourished. In fact, some of them look pretty healthy. They're smiling. But they know that there's food here. They know there's medical care here. So they bring their children looking for help.

Christophe (ph), a relief worker with Doctors Without Borders, decides it's impossible to safely screen children in these conditions.

What's the problem today?

CHRISTOPHE: Today the problem is there are too much people and uncontrolled.

COOPER: The village elders are trying to restore some semblance of order but they're not having much luck. There are just too many people, to many people trying to get food for their kids. The relief workers are actually going to cancel the program in this village for today because it's impossible to screen out the most needy. They hope they're going to be able to come back tomorrow.

A few miles away, Doctors Without Borders is able to screen other children. They're weighed and measured. Some immediately receive milk. The worst cases wind up here in the hospital. It's not known how many children have died in Niger because of this year's severe food shortage but relief agencies say there have been thousands. Their deaths don't make headlines, only their parents remember their names.

Anderson Cooper, CNN, Maradi, Niger.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: The U.N. warned of the crisis ten months ago. They say, though, the largest donations have come in only in the last ten days, which is when they started getting major news coverage of the story.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on "le programme," a struggling airline finds a new way to save money. Andy tells us which freebie has gone bye-bye as he minds your business, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Monday we told you about the troubles of Atkins Nutritionals. Lean times for the company as it files chapter 11 after a huge drop in the number of people who now turn up their noses at bagels and bread and pasta, and you know, the list goes on and on and on. So what's next in the battle of the bulge?

Joining us this morning is a columnist for "Men's Health" magazine, Heidi Skolnik. Nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us.

HEIDI SKOLNIK, "MEN'S HEALTH" MAGAZINE: My pleasure.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, I think the numbers tell the story here. At one point, I guess last year, 9 percent of all Americans were on this diet. And that's something like 26.7 million people. Fast forward a year, that's dropped down to 6.5 million people, a huge number. So why? Where did everybody go?

SKOLNIK: I think there are three reasons. One is that with Atkins, you see an initial drop, but it's been shown...

S. O'BRIEN: In weight.

SKOLNIK: In weight, right. But that -- you cannot sustain that. That by an year, if you're really hearing adhering to any kind of dietary modification, you can lose just as much without being so restricted. And that brings us to the second thing, is that Atkins, although the emphasis is on you can eat as much protein and fat as you want, the truth is. it's a very restrictive diet. There are a lot of foods you can't eat. And that ultimately doesn't really taste good and feel good.

And then third thing is there were so many -- initially people would eat, you know, the cheeseburger, but take off the bun and fries. They were actually cutting off calories. But once the market got flooded with all of these low-carb products that were often higher in calories than the original -- plus they didn't taste as good. You know, real pasta tastes great. A lot of the low-carb ones didn't.

S. O'BRIEN: So low-carb, but you were getting more calories anyway.

SKOLNIK: Exactly.

S. O'BRIEN: Kind of worked against the whole thing. Now, I guess at the end of the day, it's really about moderation. Which, of course, as a diet goes, it's so boring. I mean, who wants moderation in your diet? But if you look at the books that are now doing well, the three-hour diet, "French Women Don't Get Fat." Those are the ones at the top of the "New York Times" best-seller list. Do you think that people are moving toward moderation and moving toward a healthier diet? Or is this just sort of the pendulum going back and forth?

SKOLNIK: Well, I -- as a nutritionist, I certainly hope so. That would be good news, right?

S. O'BRIEN: As a human being who knows the reality of people's dieting habits, though.

SKOLNIK: I think that right now, yes. People are focusing in. The patterning is great that's in the three-hour diet. The idea of portion control, which is in the "French Women Don't Get Fat" diet. Those are really great, the emphasis on fruits and vegetables. But, the truth is, I'm sure within a year or two, there will be another extreme diet and it will take hold, and the American public will flock to it, and we'll see sort of a backlash to sort of more sane and healthy.

S. O'BRIEN: Why do you think something like the South Beach Diet, which is kind of a version of a low-carb diet, why is that doing so well? And consistently doing well?

SKOLNIK: Well, actually, other than the first two weeks, the South Beach Diet is very healthy diet. It's not restrictive. There are carbs, but they're healthy carbs. There's fat, healthy fat. Lean protein. Fruits and vegetables are the basis. It's a very healthy diet. And so I think, ultimately, much more sustainable.

S. O'BRIEN: If you had to write a diet book, now that you know all about people's -- not only people's eating habits, but what's healthy as well, design for me your diet.

SKOLNIK: Oh, it's coming out soon.

S. O'BRIEN: Is it really?

SKOLNIK: No, I think it's a -- I think most people can take away some good points from almost all. I really like the idea of the patterning, the portion size, the healthy fat, healthy carb, fruits and vegetables. I mean, you don't need a degree in nutrition to know more fruits and vegetables is the way to go.

S. O'BRIEN: The Heidi Skolnik healthy diet diet. Heidi, nice to have you. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it -- Miles.

SKOLNIK: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, a struggling airline gets rid of another freebie. Andy is "Minding Your Business" on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: All right, another airline freebie gone away. It's such a glamorous thing flying, isn't it, Andy?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Are you surprised that yet another thing is going by the boards in the airline business, and customers are going to have to pay more? I'm not surprised. You're not surprised either.

In mid-August, United Airlines, the nation's number-two carrier, will get rid of free sky caps. From now on, you want to use sky caps, you have to pay $2 a bag.

M. O'BRIEN: People aren't tipping?

SERWER: No, people are always tipping. But here's how it works. The airline, of course, is looking to save money. Sky caps are independent contractors. The contractors bills the airline. United is going to be getting rid of that system. Now the sky caps are going to be collecting directly from the customers, and you're expected to tip. Sky caps make between $4 and $11 an hour depending on what airport. The sky caps, obviously, not happy about this. And I wouldn't be surprised if other airlines follow suit. Of course, what hurts sky caps a lot, of course, was rollbacks. That's what hurt them even more.

M. O'BRIEN: Rollbacks, and they have those self-check-in deals now. So they're already on the ropes, and now they want to charge.

SERWER: That's right. And another story about United Airlines rolling out a new program, where you want more leg room, you have to pay for it, a new program where you would join an annual fee, $300 to $750, you get seats in front of the airplane 34 to 36 inches instead of the 31 seats -- 31 inches, I should say.

M. O'BRIEN: Wait a minute. Three inches?

SERWER: Yes, you get three inches, $300.

M. O'BRIEN: For $750?

SERWER: Yes. And finally, a story -- that's in "The Wall Street Journal." "The Washington Post" this morning reporting that Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines may be filing bankruptcy. If they do, look for that to happen in September. They won't be doing it during the busy summer flying season. They don't want to upset the business. And they won't be doing it in October, because that's when a new tough bankruptcy law comes into effect. So September could be the month.

M. O'BRIEN: Could be the bankruptcy season, shall we say?

SERWER: Yes, tis the season.

M. O'BRIEN: Andy, thank you very much.

SERWER: You're welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: Part of our celebration of CNN's quarter century on TV continues. We're counting down the leading sports personalities from the last 25 years.

Here's Larry Smith.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LARRY SMITH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The top sports characters of CNN's first 25 years. We asked the editors at sports illustrated magazine to come up with a list.

At number 20, edgy and exciting, quarterback Brett Favre is a fan favorite.

WALTER ROSS JR., PHOTOGRAPHER, "S.I.": He does things no other quarterbacks can get away with. And shouldn't.

SMITH: At number 19, celebrity came a courtin' for tennis darling Anna Kournikova, who aced her endorsements and dazzled fans with her superstar looks. At number 18, baseball's lead-off slugger Rickey Henderson was the sultan of stolen bases.

At number 17, William "The Refrigerator" Perry was the NFL's big blocker who bulldozed his way to the end zone.

At number 16, baseball's Fernando Valenzuela was the pitching phenom with the golden arm.

Stay tuned as we count down to number one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: In a moment on AMERICAN MORNING, a potential setback for authorities in the London terror investigation. The fight over one suspect's extradition is up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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