okay well this one um i do definitely
have a better view from up here
through the microscope and what you see
in the middle the big spot in the middle
is actually a spot where the where there
is no drop in other ones we have a drop
with a hole in it and you can actually
see i can see um
small crystals
on
as i focus up and down through the drop
i can see a small needle-like crystals
all the way around the edge of that drop
many many many of them
i see actually a lot of crystals some of
them are very nice they're long and thin
they're needles they're all pretty small
i think that one on the left they can
see also is that on the far left is
probably the biggest one
and but there are several that size and
i'm still trying to discern if all the
stuff in the background which is pretty
dark to them and trying to see if that
is precipitate or if those are crystals
but i think i'm going to look at the
other samples and see if this gives me
any clues if their crystals are very
very very small but i think it's
precipitate
in the middle of this picture you can
see
a couple of them about four of them that
have grown together but for the most
part these are isolated and seem to be
growing by themselves although you can
also see the smattering of smaller
crystals and it's a pretty
the crystals are not as big
it actually does not look really nearly
as nice
i don't see
precipitants per se although it's tough
to say because the crystals there's a
lot of very very very small crystals
here
friends actually wearing what everyone
has decided is their favorite shirt
today
you can tell it's not the first time
you've been modeling
yeah but it's probably the first time
without heals
you've got a point there
i'm doing well do you guys have a
picture of our experiment up there
not yet
well i was hoping to send you up some
some video of our results down here
i thought you
might might all be interested in what
we're doing with this uh
video that you're downlinking to us
um
probably uh you get a frame up there
about every
eight or sixteen seconds and uh things
seems to go pretty slow but what we've
done is uh
taken these images and made a
a movie of the uh speed up movie
about times 24 of the gfsc results and
which you can see
a lot of the evolution of these complex
turbulent flows that we're interested in
to learn about
things like solar dynamics and mantle
convection
so get out your popcorn here it goes
okay could you go ahead and roll the
video please
um what you can see in this imagery is
on the top of the frame is the equator
of the gffc and the bottom
of the frame is the pole
and if you look closely you can see
a lot of
structures that almost look vertical at
the top of the picture and these are
called the banana cells and they're the
kind of pet for
theorists of
solar convection it's a model that has
enough symmetry that the motions are
fairly simple
but what you can see as well is that
there's a lot of turbulence on the lower
half of the image
and it's a bit surprising to us that
this turbulence is so easy to excite and
spreads rapidly up from the south pole
which is at the bottom of this uh image
and comes up and erodes the uh
the organized type of banana convection
that we had thought we would be seeing
up near the equator
and columbia this is cfc standby for ga
tv uplink of something we believe you'll
be interested in seeing
okay we uh we're standing by
and for the record we're really
interested in the gffc and the astro
culture as well
welcome to cleveland
where the temperature is in the lower
50s a couple of hours ago we had rain
showers
neither team took
batting practice but the skies right now
have cleared the game will start on time
the crowd's still filing into jacobs
field for
game five of the world series between
the atlanta braves and the cleveland
indians with the braves leading in the
series
three games to one
back at jacobs field an unusual first
pitch ceremony tonight this was friday
at cape canaveral the launching of the
space shuttle columbia and then earlier
today commander ken bowersox aboard
welcome aboard columbia we've been on
orbit since flat friday conducting
science experiments as part of the
united states microgravity laboratory
but tonight our thoughts are with the
national pastime to the braves and to
the indians good luck in game five of
the world series now let's play ball
and then they recreated the end of that
throw here moments ago funny thing it
started out as a change up and wound up
as a split finger you've heard of heavy
fastballs that was weightless
well ken bowersox and catherine thornton
thanks very much for joining us this
morning how's the view i know both of
you have been up there a number of times
uh the view still worth looking at to
you
oh yeah the view from space is something
i could never get tired of we've had
some exceptionally clear patches over
the united states that's something new
for me got to see my hometown in indiana
lake michigan and
the east coast is just gorgeous
especially in new york
well catherine this is your fourth trip
up there any surprises as you look down
on the earth
now the only thing that
that i would say is a negative about
this flight is i spend a lot of time uh
where there are no windows we've had
some great passes over the united states
i've seen uh two or three of them
although it's been cloudy over the east
every time i've had a chance to look and
i'm a little bit disappointed about that
but we have another 10 days to go so
we'll get some great passes over the
united states well that's right 10 days
to go from the time of this interview a
total of 16 days but seven people on
board like being in a small motel the
bathrooms down the hall
how are the accommodations with so many
astronauts on board
ken and i
were on a flight with seven people and
four spacesuits about a year and a half
ago and it was a lot more crowded then
this is a luxury compared to
having just the crew module to live in
we have essentially twice the volume and
because we're working two shifts we have
half the people awake at any one time so
there's lots of room to
roam around in up here
well that's right you're using the cargo
bay which is what about 60 feet long
isn't it
yeah that's correct it's about 15 feet
by 60 feet
but the lab module's a little bit
shorter than that what is it kathy about
20 feet
well i want to ask you a couple of basic
questions i know on the sky lab a few
years back there was an experiment with
a shower you don't have a shower on
board how do you people keep yourselves
clean over 16 days
well uh we do a lot of sponge bathing
and that works pretty well you just soap
up a rag and wipe it over your body and
then you wet a clean rag with fresh
water and rub that over your body
something else you can do if you're if
you have a lot of time is just squirt
water on your skin
the uh the water sticks to you because
of the surface tension which is one of
the things we're studying in our science
experiments in the back and then you can
sort of rub with your fingers to get the
soap to come up into the water and then
wipe off with a towel it's almost as
good as a shower
but i don't think you could ever beat a
good solid earth shower
well i'm sure that's true you know nasa
is always bragging about the improvement
of the food on board the shuttle and i
remember the days when you used to
squeeze it out of a tube is it all that
good is it yummy
the nowadays pretty good the best thing
we have on board i think though is
peanut butter and uh we just put it on
tortillas because we don't use bread up
here because it crumbles and we don't
want to make a lot of crumbs in the air
so we have peanut butter burritos quite
a bit
peanut butter burritos and catherine
you're telling me the food is good up
there if that's the best you have i
wonder
i would like a pizza
well put out a call and see whether they
deliver
let's move on to some of the science
you're growing potatoes up there you're
becoming potato farmers how's that going
we think it's going pretty well we do a
video downlink of the condition of the
plants every day and
the pi's on the ground seem to be very
happy with the condition
that they're growing in
now what's the question you're trying to
determine whether food can indeed be
grown in weightlessness
i think there are a couple objectives of
that one is to
test an enclosed environment for growing
plants up here they give them all the
nutrients that they need the carbon
dioxide and take away the oxygen and the
ethylene
the other thing is to look at how the
plants are actually growing to get them
back on the ground and take a look at
them there's
some evidence that perhaps they don't
grow in exactly the same way that the
starch is not synthesized in the same
way as it is in gravity so that's
something that we'll learn about after
we get back to this mission so ken
you're not going to uh chop them up boil
them for mashed potatoes or have some
french fries while you're taking this
trip then
we have to hold some of the crew members
back they want to eat those potatoes but
we're not going to let them okay one of
the big problems of course is adapting
to weightlessness and frequently
astronauts
the dreaded
sas space adaptation syndrome i know you
don't like to talk about the health of
the astronauts during a flight but uh is
everybody okay
yeah we're all doing great everybody
feels good and uh
i was amazed we all felt good from the
very beginning of the mission we had
five brand new guys on board so they
didn't really know how they were going
to feel but
i think we had some really super luck on
this flight and
nobody felt bad at all
you've got a lot of free time i think
built into your schedule or at least
that's what the nasa schedule says free
time for the astronauts because after
all you're going to be up there for 16
days what are you doing or planning to
do during your free time
well the other day we spent some time
doing a pio event for the world series
we've been
taking some special photographs and uh
all of us are
spending that time to
to do just the things that we want to do
it's not that we don't have work to do
but we kind of get to elect what work we
do so we may run around and do a special
project clean up a special area or maybe
tape a video for our family when we get
back but
it's just nice to be able to plan your
own time once in a while
i uh i guess i should explain that you
sort of threw out the first ball for uh
one of the world series games and i saw
it here on earth and it worked well
after you tossed the ball towards the
camera on the columbia they cut to a
ball falling down onto the field and it
looked as if you uh threw a strike
so well done
well great i'm glad you enjoyed it uh my
crew up here was saying i was having
control problems though i don't think
they like my pitching
well even some of the pitchers in the
world series have control problems so
don't worry about that talking about the
free time catherine do you bring books
do you uh have an opportunity to sit and
read a book or is your temptation to
always go for that window whenever
possible to see the view
now we probably don't have as much free
time as the schedule looks there's
always something that needs to be done
but i did have about three or four hours
yesterday i believe it was and i spent
most of time looking out the window i
just never get tired of looking at even
passes over the oceans you can enjoy
looking at different cloud features and
watching the world go by and the
nighttime passes are particularly
spectacular if you turn out all the
lights you can look at the stars we can
see the shuttle glow on the windward
side of the shuttle and it's it's
something you just can't get tired of
well catherine thornton and ken bowersox
thanks very much for being with us i was
delighted to have this opportunity and
so we were all delighted here on
world news this morning in houston this
is abc news in new york signing off and
this is world news now
kathy thornton uh aboard the shuttle
columbia currently up upping or
increasing the amount of
power being placed to the uh
the heater element in the experiment
chamber
a three centimeter diameter chamber
this particular experiment very
important to the
experiment team the science team from
case western uh university
because uh both two and three centimeter
diameter chambers are not possible
uh to evaluate or to conduct experiment
runs uh while on the ground on earth
on earth it is only possible to run this
type of experiment with 1.2 centimeter
size or diameter cylinder chambers
that's the environment of the space lab
permitting the
science teams to conduct an experiment
not possible on earth
you