Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

International Space Station Tour

Aired September 06, 2001 - 09:16   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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Drum roll, please. This is the moment we've been waiting for this morning: The first ever live tour of the International Space Station.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: It is indeed a rare opportunity to see the brand new orbiting outpost, Alpha. Space station commander Frank Culbertson will give the walking tour in space.

CNN's space correspondent Miles O'Brien is our down-to-earth tour guide.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All right. A walking tour, a floating tour? I don't know what you'd call it. Now, take a look at this slate. This is coming from NASA television. As soon as we see some astronauts up there, we're going to get ready to begin this tour of the space station.

We've got about 15 or 16 minutes to do it. The crew: Frank Culbertson the commander, Mikhail Tyurin, Russian cosmonaut, Vladimir Dezhurov are all inside that aluminum can, if you will, with the wings. Those wings are about 300 feet in span. Inside, the crew of three lives for 4 to 6 months at a time.

This is the third permanent crew onboard this space station. The first piece of this station was launched back in November of '98, it was a Russian piece, kind of a tugboat if you will. Slowly but surely, the big pieces have been assembled in orbit. Really, the construction overall has gone off without a hitch. The tricky parts have been more the political issues and the funding issues.

Right now NASA is facing some serious cost overruns, trying to begin the -- finish out this space station as they suspect.

We're getting a live picture now from the space station.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: CNN, this is Houston. Call Alpha for a voice check.

O'BRIEN: I'm going to call them right now.

Alpha, this is CNN, how do you read me?

CMDR. FRANK CULBERTSON, SPACE STATION ALPHA: You're clear, Miles. It sounds like you are in a crowd. O'BRIEN: Well, we're here in the CNN newsroom. That's Frank Culbertson in the middle. To screen left, right over there, is Mikhail Tyurin. To the left of Commander Culbertson, Vladimir Dezhurov. There they are, onboard the International Space Station, inside the portion we call the U.S. Laboratory.

It's great to see you guys. And we're looking forward to this opportunity to see all about the International Space Station.

We've had a lot of emails that have come in over the past couple of days, when we told people about what was going on. Let's start off with one of those. And this is question which comes up a lot, and any of you guys can take this, if you like.

The question comes from Sean Owens, who is in Dublin, Ireland -- you probably passed overhead:

Is it easy to sleep in weightlessness, and do you have weird dreams doing so?

CULBERTSON: It takes a little while to get used to sleeping in zero Gs. But, once you do, it's very, very comfortable. You don't even think about whether there's a bed or not. Your body feels very well supported and comfortable all of the time.

But, we do have dreams. But, I wouldn't say they are any different than that on earth, sometimes normal, sometimes strange.

O'BRIEN: All right. We also have another place that you can participate in this event: CNN/chat. We have a real time chat underway right now, and if you want to join us, if you have any questions for the crew, as we're continuing our conversation, feel free.

One of them we just saw come through from Maurice is: Why are you wearing Russian uniforms? Why Russian uniforms, Frank? Do they make a decision on each crew as to which uniform to wear?

CULBERTSON: Well, that's because it looks good on TV. We where American clothes, Russian clothes, whatever we have that's appropriate for the time that we're doing whatever work we're doing. I spend most of my time in American issued clothes. Vladimir and Mikhail are probably more comfortable in the Russian, but it doesn't really matter.

We wear whatever is appropriate for the time.

O'BRIEN: All right. Yet more proof that this partnership works on many, many levels. All right, let's -- can we start the tour, Frank? What's the best way to go about this? Maybe Mikhail or Vladimir could help us with camera work, and you could show us a little bit about this U.S. Laboratory, and some of the science that you have planned up there.

I know it's been a busy time on the space station to date, getting it all built out. Let's talk a little bit about the things you have there in the scientific world.

CULBERTSON: I'll ask Vladimir to just zoom the camera out. It's a little tricky to transport it.

If you'd go over?

(OFF-MIKE) All right, we're taking a look now into a place that is...

CULBERTSON: All right, we'll show you a few things in the laboratory. To my right here -- to my right here is the robotics work station. We have one on each side of the lab. And that's where we control the Canadian arm from. Here's the one on the right. We also have, of course, laptop computers all over the place, from which we control the station.

Behind me and to Mikhail's right is stowage, and then behind that we have several racks that are full of experiments from around the world. Today we were doing experiments on the rack to my left, pulmonary function tests to see how your body changes with weightlessness, how your lung capacity changes.

And then to my right and overhead of Vladimir and Mikhail, we are doing an experiment to verify the characteristics of an isolation rack that we have, that separates the experiments from the natural vibrations in the station.

O'BRIEN: So a little bit of science already underway up there. I know you've got a lot of work.

CULBERTSON: To my left we have another work station, a printer. We have a full network up here from which we can communicate, both with the ground and with the other computers onboard, as well as print things that come up in the mail. And we can also receive email up here from selected people.

O'BRIEN: All right. Let's do -- let's take that...

CULBERTSON: It also has, you can't see it in the camera, but closer to the camera man we have life support equipment that allows us to remove carbon dioxide from the air, as well as clean the air and remove condensation from the air. We also have similar type equipment in the Russian module, the service module.

O'BRIEN: All right. I see your feet there are strapped down.

I know, Frank, over the weekend, on the holiday weekend...

CULBERTSON: And, of course, behind me also is the hatch from which the shuttle crew will enter when they come back and pick us up in December.

O'BRIEN: All right. Maybe I can get in now. It's kind of hard with the delay to have this conversation.

Frank, if you could -- I know you shot a tape over the weekend showing a little bit about your living quarters. Is it possible to roll that tape now, and you can sort of talk over it and explain what it is like to live onboard Space Station alpha?

CULBERTSON: As soon as the ground tells me they see that image without people in it, we'll start the tape.

O'BRIEN: All right. All right. Once, again -- while we're doing that, Frank...

CULBERTSON: Here's a view of the lab from behind us, looking towards the rest of the station. You can see in the foreground, the cycle that we use for exercise. One of several machines we have onboard. It's isolated from the station vibrations also. Below it is the lab window, which is a fairly large window. But we're not able to open it all that often. We want to protect it from meteorites and other debris.

Again, you see the robotics work station with the associated computers and monitors on the right-hand side. You can see the hand controls we use for controlling the arm.

And I'll pause every once in a while, Miles, if you have a quick question.

O'BRIEN: That's all right. You can press on. This is -- we're entering the place they call the node. That's an important connecting point.

CULBERTSON: This is entering the node Unity, which was the first American element to be lost by the space station. It was attached to the FUB functional cargo block, Zarya, which is in the background that you see.

But, before we go in there, we're going to take a quick look into the joint airlock, which was delivered by flight 7A in May, I believe it was. This flight -- sorry, it was in July. This flight contains spacesuits, both American and Russian, as well as a lot of hardware that could be installed on the outside if the need arises. Some of it will be, as payloads.

In the corner of the lab, we have other computers, laptop computer and then a communications computer that we can use for communicating with the ground. And of course you see our speed up there on the hatch. We are traveling about 28,000 kilometers per hour. And we are able to keep track of where we are over the earth with a special program called "World Map."

At this particular time, we are just south of Australia, and just about the end of the Pacific Ocean, and it's dark outside.

O'BRIEN: Speed limit of 17,500 miles an hour...

CULBERTSON: Kind of like the "Blues Brothers" did it.

O'BRIEN: Yes, you're moving along. CULBERTSON: To the right there is the water that we have stowed in bags. We have over two tons of water that we use for various purposes; of course drinking, and cleaning and preparing food, and also for producing the oxygen that we breathe onboard. It's run through an electrolysis process in the service module, in a machine called Electron.

There's also a good array of tools. They would look great in anybody's garage, both metric and the U.S. Unfortunately, we're not all metric up here. But we have great tools that we can do a lot of good things with up here to keep the station running.

We're now entering the pressurized mating adaptor, which takes us into the Russian segment. You can see the ventilation tubes that go through there. As you can see, up or down doesn't really matter as you travel through the various parts of the station.

Above the camera as we travel through this part of the FUB, is the Soyuz spacecraft. Didn't get a good picture of that, but it's the one that stays docked all the time, always open, always operational in case we have to return to Earth in an emergency. It will be changed out in October with the visiting crew that comes up to bring us a new Soyuz.

We're now in the Zarya, the functional cargo box, the first element of the space station that was launched almost three years ago in November.

This is a lot of the food that we just received. As you can see, there's still a lot of things out in the aisles, because we don't have places for everything yet. But this is the Russian provided food. We have 50 percent Russian, 50 percent American in boxes that come up in the wide variety of types of food and drinks.

Now we are leaving the FUB, and entering the node that attaches the FUB to the service module. Again, you can see the ventilation tubes that go through there. So, we have a complete exchange of air throughout the station on a very frequent basis. Air flows from one end to the other through those tubes, and then back through the hatches.

You can see Mikhail exercising on the treadmill. I'll show you more about that in a minute. We're now going through what is called the Central Command Post of the service module. That's one of the several windows in the service module. This is the command post. We have both an American laptop and a Russian laptop there, monitoring the systems onboard. Of course we have a warning panel. A clock that is synced up with Mission Control. And from here we can tell what's going on anywhere in the station. That's the Russian laptop on the left, and the American on the right.

We have communication panels in this area, as well as backup control systems for turning systems on and off, and also for operating remote -- remotely operated spacecrafts, such as Progress, if we need to manually dock them. We have a wide array of cameras that we keep ready all the time in all the modules, either for Earth observation or for interior shops.

Here's our pilot Vladimir Dezhurov, just finished taking some shots with the video, and I'm trying to get him to turn around to say hi to the camera, which he'll do in just a minute.

Good morning, Vladimir.

Vladimir, of course, was the commander of Mir 18, the first joint mission between the shuttle and the Mir Station, and was the one who shook Hoot Gibson's hand when that historic docking took place.

On the treadmill, behind our table, is Mikhail Tyurin, our flight engineer. This is Mikhail's first flight into space, but he adapted in about 5 minutes and is like a veteran up here.

This area is basically our kitchen, our dining room, our gymnasium, our bedroom and our bathroom all in one small area. You can see Mikhail exercising very vigorously on the treadmill. Here's a little bit of what's left over from breakfast. And behind that -- to the left of that is a water dispenser, hot or cold water. And behind that is Mikhail's Kayuta (ph), or state room. And on the other side is my Kayuta, which is Russian for state room or cabin.

Now we're going to go back to the necessary part of the station real quickly, just to show you what that looks like. It's pretty small, and -- but it's very, very efficient, and it works extremely well, and fortunately is very, very reliable. That's, of course, the waste containment system, or Asu (ph) in Russian. On the ground we generally call it a bathroom.

Back in the back is the rear section of the station, which at this time is attached -- has attached to it a progress tanker or a resupply vehicle. Here's a quick shot in my cabin. You can see we personalize to remind us of home. And some stacks that have been set up by my parents on the left there.

O'BRIEN: All right, Frank...

CULBERTSON: And other things we keep handy for reading. Then, a quick view out the window there...

O'BRIEN: Frank, we have to drop in here.

(NEWS BREAK)

O'BRIEN: We continue our tour in space.

CULBERTSON: In a moment you will be able to see Long Island, Manhattan and almost to Cape Cod.

But anyway, if you want to come back to the interview, we're ready.

O'BRIEN: That is some view. Now, that shows us a little bit how of how the orientation can change. Question which keeps coming up in the chatroom, and you know, Mikhail if you want to answer it, Vladimir, that's find too. The question is: Your free time. What do you do in your free time. How much free time do you have? Do you just, as it seems here, do you hang around? .

MIKHAIL TYURIN, FLIGHT ENGINEER, SPACE STATION ALPHA: Well, first of all, I have to say that we don't have too much free time. We're usually busy. But of course, we have some, and we have time to spend it doing something, what we usually do on the ground, and now our home. We are trying to read, to discuss something of interest and so on. Maybe in future, very soon, we will try to play music.

O'BRIEN: Tell us about the -- a lot of people are very curious about the recycling system. This came up from several people in the chat group. As you get us back to an earth orientation there, thanks you very much. We should probably have this whole event sponsored by Dramamine.

As you go through the day, is it -- is there certain things you miss the most? Is there any one thing about Earth that comes to mind?

Do you want to take that, Vladimir?

VLADIMIR DEZHUROV, PILOT, SPACE STATION ALPHA: Sometimes we try to find extra hour or small places, where we are from. And that it's very interesting to see from space. But unfortunately, usually it is not possible. Sometimes there is clouds, or sometimes it's very difficult to find this place.

O'BRIEN: All right. I believe we have lost our visual signal from the International Space Station now.

We want to thank Mikhail Tyurin, Vladimir Dezhurov, and the commander, Frank Culberston, for taking time out of their very busy schedule in space. They spent a couple of hours over their break, over the weekend, shooting that videotape for us to give us that tour. We do appreciate their time.

Fascinating tour of the International Space Station. And just, if you are still listening in Houston, that concludes the CNN event. Thank you very much gentlemen. We will send it back to the desk.

HARRIS: Not bad. Not bad.

MESERVE: I really like that sitting upside down thing. Do you think we could do that here?

HARRIS: I don't think so. Don't suggest it. You know we're trying so many different things around here, we may have to one day.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com