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CNN Live At Daybreak
Life on the International Space Station
Aired August 14, 2001 - 08:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, U.S. astronaut Frank Culbertson has a new home for the next 120 days. He and two Russian cosmonauts will be living aboard space station Alpha for the next four months. They arrived there over the weekend. Four months aboard the International Space Station is a long time. Sounds like a long time, to me, but it is an assignment that few in the space program would pass up.
And our space correspondent Miles O'Brien is here this morning to talk about life out there.
It does sound like a long time, four months, in those cramped quarters. Would you do it?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, of course, in a heartbeat.
MCEDWARDS: Yes.
O'BRIEN: But I -- you know -- you know what the biggest complaint is: the water is warm. You know they recycle all the water.
MCEDWARDS: Ooh, right,...
O'BRIEN: And...
MCEDWARDS: ... so you're drinking warm water.
O'BRIEN: ... chilling it was not part of the equation. And so what they've done is they've been taking containers full of water and sort of putting them right next to the windows on the cold side of the station -- the dark side of the station to try and chill the water down.
MCEDWARDS: And is it working?
O'BRIEN: It's -- somewhat.
MCEDWARDS: I guess...
O'BRIEN: But I mean that is the recurring complaint. You know it's the little things that get you in these deals.
MCEDWARDS: Well, I guess warm water, though, for their sponge baths or whatever they do up there is probably good but not so good for drinking.
O'BRIEN: But if you're a little thirsty at the end of a hard day lifting and toting and whatever you're doing up there,...
MCEDWARDS: Yes,...
O'BRIEN: ... it's not the right thing.
(CROSSTALK)
MCEDWARDS: ... a cold drink. What it's like up there? Describe the sort of environment they're in.
O'BRIEN: Well, you know imagine a room where there's no ceiling, no walls, no floor. No matter which way you look, you could be looking at it right side up. It's kind of a strange disorienting thing. As a matter of fact, wherever you go throughout the space station, there are little arrows directing you to where things are.
Here's where -- we're entering into one of the docking ports there, and as you can see, no matter where you turn and look you see racks and racks of equipment. These are protein crystal experiments here. And this is inside the laboratory. This little device here is what controls the robotic arm on the lab. This is a protein crystal experiment, which would hopefully one day -- there it is. That's the advanced protein crystal facility, which will hopefully lead to new and novel drugs. Anyway, that's the controller for that robotic arm.
There you see Jim Voss who is part of the Expedition II crew. He was be -- he'll be swapped out. As a matter of fact, he's been officially swapped out by other members of the crew. That is Rick Sturckow, the pilot of the shuttle.
This is the place they call the node. It's kind of like that connector on your tinker toys and all the cylinders kind of attach to it. So it's a big crossroads. And as you see, see what it says right there, it says two halve -- two halve. So when you go in there, you can find out where you're going. And that little thing where you saw somebody disappear there, that was just because of some fancy editing.
There's Susan Helms. She's part of the Expedition crew II as well. She's carrying one of these containers -- soft-sided sacks that they are off-loading from this cargo module called Leonardo, this Italian-made logistics module. A lot of toting and moving of bales. And it's interesting, this crew is 15 hours ahead of their timeline. And...
MCEDWARDS: You're kidding.
O'BRIEN: No, it's very interesting. There's been several of these missions so far to bring up supplies and so forth from these modules and this is the first crew -- with all the Ph.D.s up there in space -- this is the first crew to figure out it's -- an easier way to do this is to use a bucket brigade. They've gone to the old- fashioned...
MCEDWARDS: They've gone to that.
O'BRIEN: And they've been tossing gear around as opposed to each one of them carrying it to its designated spot.
MCEDWARDS: We're making so much of what they're doing up there at this point is just learning by trial and error. As you say, all Ph.D.s aside, it comes down to what you can do in that physical space.
O'BRIEN: Exactly and it's these little things that the engineers don't necessarily think about, like how do you efficiently move all those bags outside of a cargo module in a tight confined space when everything's floating? And sure enough, a bucket brigade is the way to go and they're 15 hours ahead. It's little things like this that make it worthwhile, NASA would tell you,...
MCEDWARDS: Sure.
O'BRIEN: ... to be in space for such long durations.
Let's take a look at some of these other pictures. This is, once again, some of those racks. I think this is actually a replay of what we just saw so I don't think we need to go through it all again. But imagine how disorienting it would be to wake up and there's no up, there's no down. No matter which way you look, it could be a ceiling, could be a wall, could be a floor.
MCEDWARDS: I was laughing at this wire copy this morning saying that the shuttle is delivering a bedroom suite. Now I assume that's not a four poster with matching tables.
O'BRIEN: Not exactly. You know to this moment, Susan Helms has been living in the lab. She's sort of set up camp there. There hasn't -- there was -- there was two sleeping berths in the Russian built module and so it's nice, I guess, to have an extra sleeping compartment, don't you think?
MCEDWARDS: Miles O'Brien, wonderful.
O'BRIEN: All right.
MCEDWARDS: Nice to see you. Thank you so much for this.
O'BRIEN: Good to see you. My pleasure.
MCEDWARDS: Good to see you.
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