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American Morning
Shuttle Endeavour to Attempt Landing in California
Aired May 01, 2001 - 10:07 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The shuttle astronauts are looking for a ticket to land. An update for you now on the space shuttle Endeavour and its delayed return to Earth. Foul weather in Florida has forced the cancellations of two scheduled landings in Florida this morning so it is wheels up for Endeavour as it travels to California for another try.
Miles O'Brien here to tell us more about that.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A little west coast turnaround for the space shuttle Endeavour. And that's a million dollar ticket for NASA. They prefer to land at the home base at the Kennedy Space Center. But let me show you some weather situations right now and why that's not a good idea.
This is the latest radar showing Florida. That's the Kennedy Space Center. And right over it are some green blobs. Those green blobs mean trouble for a space shuttle, a space shuttle, as hardy as it may be, cannot fly through even the most gentle of rain showers. There you see the cloud cover over there.
The problem is it's socked in for the remainder of the week just like this. The forecast is grim. Take a look at the situation at Edwards Air Force Base, though. There is nothing, nothing on that map there that would give you any indication, if I can find Edwards here, on the -- let's see, there's LAX. It's, there it is. There's Edwards right there. No radar images whatsoever. Take a look at the satellite image. Clear as a bell. That is where Endeavour is headed.
Let me just show you briefly what they're going to be doing. They're going to take a path which will bring them across the Pacific Ocean. They'll be, you know, what's interesting here, Daryn, they'll be traveling about 15,000 miles an hour here. They'll be traveling zero there. That's what I call standing on the brakes, wouldn't you?
KAGAN: Yeah.
O'BRIEN: And then they'll come up for their approach. They'll swing around like this and land, runway 22 at Edwards, where it is pristine weather and we the taxpayers will pay the million dollars to bring Endeavour back to Florida.
KAGAN: The million dollars.
O'BRIEN: That's the way it goes.
KAGAN: And you thought the fees were bad on the airline ticket you had to change.
O'BRIEN: I've got to tell you, what about those frequent flier miles?
KAGAN: Yeah. Remind us again about this mission. They installed a very important arm that will be important for years to come.
O'BRIEN: Yes. This was perhaps the most difficult mission thus far of the space shuttle or space station assembly.
KAGAN: Really?
O'BRIEN: They had a tremendous difficulty with the on board computers on the space station. A lot of the NASA engineers have been telling me that the real issue don't focus so much on the hardware. The real big difference on this space station is the millions of lines of computer code and that did come to bite them here. It's the most complicated computer network ever flown in space and it crashed and it took them a while to get it back up and running. It was some tense moments there.
KAGAN: Did they have any contact with Dennis Tito up there or are they...
O'BRIEN: Well, the shuttle was gone.
KAGAN: Right.
O'BRIEN: The Soyuz did arrive and of course the three person crew at the space station was there to greet them. Two of them are Americans: Jim Voss, Susan Helms. The commander is Russian, Yuri Usachev. Now, which -- it creates an interesting little dynamic there. I was, I talked to, you know, Helms and Voss before they left and asked them, you know, what would you do if Dennis Tito floated across your portal? Would you, you know, treat him...
KAGAN: Could you pass that wrench, Dennis, you know?
O'BRIEN: Yeah.
KAGAN: You know, make yourself useful.
O'BRIEN: How would you, would you treat him like any other member of the crew? They said we would greet him warmly but we would taken direction from our bosses as to what to allow him to do. And they basically told him to stay away.
KAGAN: Yeah, don't touch.
O'BRIEN: He will be escorted in the U.S. side. It's not quite a Checkpoint Alpha there with razor ribbon, but there is some tension between the two programs right now. KAGAN: As we've come to understand over the last week.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
KAGAN: Very good. Well, you're going to stick around?
O'BRIEN: Yeah, we'll be here for the landing, of course.
KAGAN: Which we expect at 12:11 P.M.?
O'BRIEN: 12:11 P.M. Eastern Time. That would be 9:11 at Edwards.
KAGAN: Very good and so we'll have you stick around for that and we'll see that live here on CNN.
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