Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Imagine Being in Space and Watching War Break Out Beneath You

Aired December 28, 2001 - 07:25   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Imagine what it's like to spend three months floating in space looking at the world as it passes beneath you. Now imagine being in space for all that period of time and watching a war break out 240 miles beneath you.

Frank Culbertson knows exactly what that is like. He's back from the international space station Alpha having spent three months there, but back on the ground now for a little more than a month.

He joins us live now from Houston for a little debrief. Good to see you, Frank.

FRANK CULBERTSON, ASTRONAUT: Good morning, Miles. How are you?

O'BRIEN: Good. How are you feeling, first of all? I know it takes a little while to get used to gravity after all that time without it.

CULBERTSON: I feel great. Actually, better than I thought I would, though I do miss zero G occasionally.

O'BRIEN: What is the thing you miss the most about being in space?

CULBERTSON: Well, being able to float from one end to the other and the view. Both of those things are quite remarkable and I do miss those.

O'BRIEN: So the view at Clear Lake in Houston doesn't quite match 240 miles above us, huh?

CULBERTSON: It's not quite the same.

O'BRIEN: What is, you know, when you look ahead toward future space travel, do you think that the human body is well adapted for it now that you've had an opportunity to spend a lot of time up there and then come back and try to reacclimatize?

CULBERTSON: Well, I think the human body acclimates very well to whatever environment it's in, including zero G. But we have to work very hard to make sure that when we do arrive at some destination we're ready to work up there. And like whether it's the moon or Mars or whatever, you've got to do certain exercises and take certain countermeasures to be ready to operate right away. O'BRIEN: Well, again, some pictures that were beamed down while you were up there. You're there with your Russian crew mates, Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhurov. What was it like -- you have a longstanding relationship with the Russians, having worked on the shuttle Mir program as NASA's point person on that, but what was it like to fly with the Russians? Was it difficult? Was it challenging? Were there cultural misunderstandings?

CULBERTSON: Well, it was challenging in many ways to fly in space no matter what the crew mix. But of course there are cultural issues whenever you're working in an international program and you have to be aware of those. I was fortunate to have had a lot of experience working across several boundaries and so that helped a lot. But it's something you need to educate people on and give them experience in before you put them in an environment like that.

O'BRIEN: Yes, I mean after all, astronauts are often trained in the technical realm, engineers, that kind of thing.

CULBERTSON: Right.

O'BRIEN: It doesn't necessarily well suit you for that kind of role as more or less an ambassador, I suppose.

CULBERTSON: You are an ambassador in many ways and we do spend time now training people in language and culture and I think it's paying off.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about September 11. You, I don't know how word filtered to you, but maybe if you could just sort of relieve that day for us from your perspective as we look at some of the pictures you gathered as you passed over Manhattan.

CULBERTSON: Sure. We were in the middle of physical exams, actually, and the doctor came on and he said Frank, we're having a pretty bad day down here. And I didn't quite know what he meant. And he started explaining. And then as he was talking to me he saw on the news that another airliner had crashed in Pennsylvania, which made four. And he was trying to explain to me the magnitude of what was happening and of course it was very difficult for us to comprehend or digest all of that quickly. It just didn't seem believable.

O'BRIEN: As we look at these pictures of Manhattan with the smoke streaming out, how quickly after the airliners had struck the Trade Center did you pass overhead?

CULBERTSON: I think it was about an hour afterwards and I believe if you look at the smoke pall that's at the base of the column of smoke that's streaming out to the south, I believe we were seeing some time around the time of the collapse of one of the towers. It was quite a horrifying sight.

O'BRIEN: What is that like to see it from that perspective? It must be, you know, because I remember my initial reaction was, you know, where's my wife, where are my kids. It was one of those natural reactions. I'm sure you had a similar type of human reaction. And to be where you were must have been frustrating.

CULBERTSON: Yes, I knew that the people down there were suffering greatly and that it was a terrible tragedy on the ground. But of course I was very anxious to hear if there was any problems in the Houston area and to fly over that part of the world and see for myself that everything looked OK. And of course every time we came over the U.S., we were looking, or, in fact, any part of the world, including Russia, we were looking to see if there were any other problems cropping up.

O'BRIEN: How much did that change the tone of your flight after September 11?

CULBERTSON: Well, for me personally it changed it quite a bit. Every morning the mail brought new information about what had happened, either bad news or sometimes news of heroism that was enough to effect you quite a bit emotionally. And so for several weeks I was getting little doses of this and the reality of what had happened. But it's very difficult to understand it until you get back and see the changes that are here.

O'BRIEN: Do you feel like you came back to a very different place?

CULBERTSON: In many ways it's different. I haven't had a chance to get out a lot to see all of the changes but around the airports and even out shopping and around the town and of course around the government facilities, there is quite a bit of change, and it's not something we've seen in the U.S., but it's similar to what you see in Europe and many other countries around the world nowadays.

O'BRIEN: Frank Culbertson, NASA astronaut, commander of Expedition 3 on board the international space station Alpha. We wish you well on your physical recovery. We wish you well on all your endeavors in the future. Take care.

CULBERTSON: Thanks and happy new year to all my family and friends around the world, Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, we appreciate the good wishes. Take care.

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