all systems go in orbit for the crew
aboard the shuttle columbia astronauts
have been conducting experiments all
week making up for lost ground following
the mission in april which was cut short
due to a defective generator for details
on just what's been accomplished so far
and what's to come in the week ahead
before columbia comes back down to earth
we go far above earth this morning to
the shuttle where we're joined by
mission specialist michael gernhardt and
roger crutch they join us from inside
the space laboratory gentlemen thank you
for being with us this morning
good morning it's nice to be with you
roger crouch
you got about a week to go left in the
mission you uh it's the first reflight
in history how is the mission going
that seems to be going pretty well we've
got a lot a few little problems that
we're working on but overall i think
everything's working real well
getting some really exciting science
results and we're all real pleased about
it
you're studying in some of your
experience experiments the behavior of
fire in the absence of grav and gravity
how are you conducting that experiment
and what do you hope the results will
show you
we're conducting several experiments of
that type and most of them are in a
self-contained
sort of a
real safe environment so that none of
the fire fuel could get out and cause a
problem they're relatively small tires
some of them are just a little droplet
of fire hanging on a wire so that we're
looking at that what we hope to learn
from that is a better way to make have
more efficient fires on earth so that we
can cut down on pollution and through
efficiency save a lot of fuel
michael because this is the first reef
flight in history what were you able to
learn back in april that's being applied
to the mission now
well actually as you point out this is
the first re-flight in history and uh
it's the fastest turnaround in shuttle
history and the fastest turnaround of
any uh astronaut crew
it's a great opportunity for us because
we trained for a year for the first
mission and then we had a chance to do a
dress rehearsal under fairly demanding
circumstances with the fuel cell power
down and from that we really fine-tuned
all of the salient points of space
flight and this mission has been
really smooth uh roger could talk to the
science we actually learned some things
on the science that helped us
change things and optimize uh this
particular mission based on the past one
michael full i understand by ham radio
what's it like buzzing by seeing
neighbors in space up there
yeah we talked to mike the other day and
uh
at certain points in our orbit we're
able to see the mirror space station it
looks like a very very bright star maybe
uh two or three times as bright as venus
looks from up here and with binoculars
you can actually see the shape of the of
the space station it was great talking
to mike he sounded really good and and
uh things seem to be progressing uh
pretty much the way they want to on
board they just got a new uh
supply of food and and uh spray parts
and so forth so uh the concept was it
was christmas on mirror with all
we've taken a look into your background
it includes extensive experience in deep
sea diving and oceanography we're
wondering if you see any similarities
between your work on the ocean floor and
in outer space
well they're actually very similar in a
number of different ways
one is that they're both an operational
environment where you really can't
breathe and work in the atmosphere
without some type of life support system
or shelter and uh
on my first mission i did a space walk
and that was very analogous mentally to
doing the deep sea commercial diving
work that i did
and then the other thing that's real
common is just working as a team with a
with a group of people uh we had to do
that uh in the offshore diving business
and it's it's critical uh of critical
importance that you'll be able to work
as a team in a shuttle mission because
the shuttle is so complex that that no
one person can do it by themselves and
so you know that that kind of teamwork
uh translates very well into space
operations
roger you mentioned your age a little
bit earlier also this week we heard that
former astronaut john glenn said he
would like to fly again even at age 75
and nasa is said to be seriously
considering the idea when you think
about that he is 20 years your senior
think back 20 years now for me is your
body
going to be able to withstand that do
you think going up there learning a
little bit more about what we can do in
space at a more advanced stage
oh yeah i think what a lot of times the
chemistry of the body changes as we get
older but i think that a person like
senator glenn as it keeps himself in
good shape i'd be glad to go along with
him as a junior brother or sort of
brother in arms or whatever and then go
again when i'm 75 that'd be kind of a
cool trip i think and then we could
compare my data than his
we saw also as we were setting up for
the interview i believe you had a teddy
bear strapped to your knee uh what's
that all about sir
uh sometimes national lets you do things
that keep you in touch with your family
and i'm that's just a little bear that's
been in my family between myself and my
fiance
and my kids for several years and i take
it on travel with me a lot and this is
just a trip that i thought would be real
nice to bring it along with me and nash
will let me do that
he sleeps with it too
we won't go there
there's the tool you can see it's uh
phillips and on the long ratchet wrench
with
phillips helps number two from the ism
kit copy
you can see mike is braced pretty good
to get some good
uh force against the
assembly and and mike uh roger was
turning it while mike was pushing and it
just stripped
and we see
in columbia houston can you confirm the
uh perhaps point to them the the places
where the screws are binding
copy the third from the right
and that's the fourth one down from on
the right side
and also the fourth one down on the left
side okay those are the ones we copied
that's just so far we haven't tried the
top yet
understand mike and we're asking ifm if
they want to get you to position the
camera for any particular view so stand
by
okay
okay mark forward on r4 yankee moving
aft and this is the top of the panel
and we have not uh attempted to do these
top fasteners yet because that was uh
not where we were in this sequence
okay now i'm on the far as side or the
right side as you face the panel and
going down
you see the corner fasteners still in
because we haven't torqued that yet
the number two fastener is loose
the number three
i believe is stuck
and there's the number four
and the bottom
the g connector or fastener rather
okay we're moving along from after
forward
and we had
the third from forward on the bottom
here was was stuck like the others and
we managed to get that one out
with the tool that we showed you
previously
okay now we're forward moving up in the
vertical
and we're back to the starting point
and columbia mike that was excellent we
really appreciate that that gives us a
good idea of what the situation is and
we'll try to come up with some words for
you on that
the other thought that we have and we're
not sure this will work
is the
possibility of
i know i can get the uh
the j13 connector
from the access panel here
and we're wondering
that
we could probably get the j18 if we
removed
the
j17 connector first with a connector
tool
so that's a that's a path that we could
try
if you guys think that makes sense
okay we copy we'll we'll add that to our
thinking
i'm shooting for 95 psi on both of them
is that what you want or you want
something a little higher
95 is fine and steam one says it looks
good on the ground here
copy that
okay this is test point zero seven alpha
opening
valve sierra bravo zero seven now
copy
copy that greg we're very happy with
that burn
okay i got a special favorite if
the cm1 team knows ahead of time that
they're going to want me to do a
different procedure than the procedure
book
they could tell me ahead of time then i
can be sure to do it the way they want
from the beginning rather than having to
mess up the first few seconds of the
experiment
in columbia houston jim we're with you
there on the flight deck
okay great you can see susan is
exercising we try to get in and uh we
have an hour scheduled for exercise of
course only about 30 minutes then it's
actually on the bike the only other 30
minutes is spent getting ready and then
afterwards cleaning up and changing back
into the workflows here we've got a
little video here that greg made
explaining some of the combustion
processes back in the lab so what i'm
going to do is give you mid deck
downlink
one of the experiments on our mission is
the combustion module one
it's a rack designed for multiple
experiments
and one of the experiments in it right
now is called the laminar soot processes
experiment the purpose of this
experiment is to study soot formation
in microgravity
investigator the principal investigator
on this project professor jerry faith at
the university of michigan
is one of the preeminent suit
researchers in the world today
and he believes
that by studying soot formation in
microgravity we can learn important
insights about sit formation in many
important practical devices here on
earth soot formation
involves the growth of a solid
particulate
order from gaseous material
and it's indicated here by this model
the soot aggregate is made up of a very
large number of much smaller primary
particles
primary particle joins
to the soot aggregate
and the soot aggregate grows
by studying this process in microgravity
we can learn much about
the soot formation process
well that's it we had a successful day
working uh glove box experiments for
combustion uh dom was busy with that all
day and had a really successful day so
we felt like chalk another one up for
sts 94. not every collision thanks for
joining us
you