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American Morning
Talk With Crew of Expedition 6
Aired May 23, 2003 - 08:17 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.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to move on this morning to the crew of the Expedition 6. They are back on U.S. soil again after spending a 161 day mission aboard the international space station. You may recall the crew's harrowing landing in their Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan earlier this month.
Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA Space Officer Don Pettit returned to the Johnson Space Station Center in Houston on Wednesday.
They all three are joining us now live from Houston.
Good morning to the three of you.
Thanks so much for being here, gentlemen.
DONALD PETTIT, NASA SCIENCE OFFICER: Good morning. It's great to be with you.
KENNETH BOWERSOX, EXPEDITION 6 COMMANDER: Good to be with you. Good morning.
COLLINS: I just want to talk to you about that very day. A 70 minute reentry on May 4th. Not really an easy landing, by any means. And, in fact, Dr. Pettit, you had said, quote, it was like you had the weight of the world taken off your shoulders.
Tell us exactly what you were feeling.
PETTIT: Well, you certainly feel heavy and I felt like what you feel when you fly in the back of this NASA airplane, this KC135 that flies parabolas and it has a 2G pullout. So I felt like I was heavy, about twice as heavy as you normally would weigh.
However, you're still able to move around and control yourself with that weight. And we were able to power down the spacecraft, open the hatch, get out and set up the survival gear. So in spite of the heaviness and in spite of the unpleasant vestibular kinds of sensations that you were having, we were still able to do the necessary operational tasks.
COLLINS: I should say, you felt like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. But then when you did land, you felt like you had the weight of the world, I imagine, off your shoulders. In fact, Nikolai Budarin, how about you? And Commander Ken Bowersox, you were very, very happy to see the "brown ground."
What did you mean by that?
BOWERSOX: Well, when we flew over Kazakhstan days before, I'd look out and I'd see the landing zone and it looked like this big brown prairie north of the Aral Sea. But as we got closer and, in fact, as we were sitting there with the nose of the spacecraft sort of pushed up against the dirt and this, the ground right outside my window, it almost looked like it was glowing. It was beautiful. The color was richer, brighter and the grass, the green in the grass was something I'll never forget.
COLLINS: And that is because, why? I think the two of you maybe laid in it for a while, didn't you?
BOWERSOX: We did lay in it after we got out. We spent a little bit of time laying there and just sort of enjoying being on earth.
COLLINS: Commander Bowersox, I am wondering a little bit about the complications with this descent.
Are we any closer at this point to knowing what happened?
BOWERSOX: Well, the folks in Russia have been keeping us informed on the preliminary findings as they go along. We can't really talk about those today. But they're getting closer to figuring out what happened and we expect a formal report pretty soon.
COLLINS: Nikolai Budarin, if I may ask you, I know that back when the Shuttle Endeavour brought you down, or, pardon me, when you launched in the Shuttle Endeavour on November 23rd, it was a difficult time because of what had happened with the Shuttle Colombia. You were supposed to stay until March 1st. Obviously, that had been extended.
What were you feeling when you knew about the fate of those on the Colombia?
Nikolai Budarin, can you hear me?
BOWERSOX: He's waiting for the interpreter to interpret your question. And then he'll answer in Russian and get is reinterpreted.
COLLINS: Great.
NIKOLAI BUDARIN, FLIGHT ENGINEER (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Of course, when we heard about the news of the death on Colombia, it was just a tragedy and a shock for us. We had to continue our work and life has to go on. The first days afterward were difficult to experience all of that, to go through that. And even now, when you think back, the work that we do in space is a risky thing to do. There's a constant risk involved.
Even now, I'm finding it hard to answer your question, what we were thinking. What we were thinking was that we need to continue what we're doing. Our program has to continue. We talked to other crews, we talked to each other and we made the decision that we will work as much as we need to if they extend us for another half a year. We were ready for, to be up on board for a long as necessary. We were prepared to do anything we needed to do in order for the ISS program to continue.
COLLINS: Very good.
Nikolai Budarin speaking to us through an interpreter, thanks so much.
A very difficult time, I'm sure, for the three of you at that very moment, and the rest of the world to watch.
Thanks so much for being with us, though, gentlemen, this morning.
Kenneth Bowersox, Expedition 6 commander; Nikolai Budarin, flight engineer; and Don Pettit, the NASA science officer, once again, thank you to the three of you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 23, 2003 - 08:17 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to move on this morning to the crew of the Expedition 6. They are back on U.S. soil again after spending a 161 day mission aboard the international space station. You may recall the crew's harrowing landing in their Soyuz spacecraft in Kazakhstan earlier this month.
Commander Ken Bowersox, Flight Engineer Nikolai Budarin and NASA Space Officer Don Pettit returned to the Johnson Space Station Center in Houston on Wednesday.
They all three are joining us now live from Houston.
Good morning to the three of you.
Thanks so much for being here, gentlemen.
DONALD PETTIT, NASA SCIENCE OFFICER: Good morning. It's great to be with you.
KENNETH BOWERSOX, EXPEDITION 6 COMMANDER: Good to be with you. Good morning.
COLLINS: I just want to talk to you about that very day. A 70 minute reentry on May 4th. Not really an easy landing, by any means. And, in fact, Dr. Pettit, you had said, quote, it was like you had the weight of the world taken off your shoulders.
Tell us exactly what you were feeling.
PETTIT: Well, you certainly feel heavy and I felt like what you feel when you fly in the back of this NASA airplane, this KC135 that flies parabolas and it has a 2G pullout. So I felt like I was heavy, about twice as heavy as you normally would weigh.
However, you're still able to move around and control yourself with that weight. And we were able to power down the spacecraft, open the hatch, get out and set up the survival gear. So in spite of the heaviness and in spite of the unpleasant vestibular kinds of sensations that you were having, we were still able to do the necessary operational tasks.
COLLINS: I should say, you felt like you had the weight of the world on your shoulders. But then when you did land, you felt like you had the weight of the world, I imagine, off your shoulders. In fact, Nikolai Budarin, how about you? And Commander Ken Bowersox, you were very, very happy to see the "brown ground."
What did you mean by that?
BOWERSOX: Well, when we flew over Kazakhstan days before, I'd look out and I'd see the landing zone and it looked like this big brown prairie north of the Aral Sea. But as we got closer and, in fact, as we were sitting there with the nose of the spacecraft sort of pushed up against the dirt and this, the ground right outside my window, it almost looked like it was glowing. It was beautiful. The color was richer, brighter and the grass, the green in the grass was something I'll never forget.
COLLINS: And that is because, why? I think the two of you maybe laid in it for a while, didn't you?
BOWERSOX: We did lay in it after we got out. We spent a little bit of time laying there and just sort of enjoying being on earth.
COLLINS: Commander Bowersox, I am wondering a little bit about the complications with this descent.
Are we any closer at this point to knowing what happened?
BOWERSOX: Well, the folks in Russia have been keeping us informed on the preliminary findings as they go along. We can't really talk about those today. But they're getting closer to figuring out what happened and we expect a formal report pretty soon.
COLLINS: Nikolai Budarin, if I may ask you, I know that back when the Shuttle Endeavour brought you down, or, pardon me, when you launched in the Shuttle Endeavour on November 23rd, it was a difficult time because of what had happened with the Shuttle Colombia. You were supposed to stay until March 1st. Obviously, that had been extended.
What were you feeling when you knew about the fate of those on the Colombia?
Nikolai Budarin, can you hear me?
BOWERSOX: He's waiting for the interpreter to interpret your question. And then he'll answer in Russian and get is reinterpreted.
COLLINS: Great.
NIKOLAI BUDARIN, FLIGHT ENGINEER (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Of course, when we heard about the news of the death on Colombia, it was just a tragedy and a shock for us. We had to continue our work and life has to go on. The first days afterward were difficult to experience all of that, to go through that. And even now, when you think back, the work that we do in space is a risky thing to do. There's a constant risk involved.
Even now, I'm finding it hard to answer your question, what we were thinking. What we were thinking was that we need to continue what we're doing. Our program has to continue. We talked to other crews, we talked to each other and we made the decision that we will work as much as we need to if they extend us for another half a year. We were ready for, to be up on board for a long as necessary. We were prepared to do anything we needed to do in order for the ISS program to continue.
COLLINS: Very good.
Nikolai Budarin speaking to us through an interpreter, thanks so much.
A very difficult time, I'm sure, for the three of you at that very moment, and the rest of the world to watch.
Thanks so much for being with us, though, gentlemen, this morning.
Kenneth Bowersox, Expedition 6 commander; Nikolai Budarin, flight engineer; and Don Pettit, the NASA science officer, once again, thank you to the three of you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
