 flying machine. And Charlie and Jean François were with you in the tunnel. Houston we're on board looking into the spacehab. Hello Jean François. Go ahead for biorect. The folks in the spacehab we're looking over your shoulder in. Houston in preparation for the upcoming biorect activity per our pre-flight agreement we think it'd be more efficient to split the air to grounds. Affirmative and we're setting up the CIC on the ground to match. We see Charlie and it's a good clear image. Tell me aren't you a bit scared about boarding the Russian space station because it's been a pretty dangerous place to be hasn't it? The difficult thing we did yesterday and that was a bit often that has by far the highest risk in it because you're going from zero miles an hour to 17,000 miles per hour and when you're traveling in that kind of speed it's also quite hard to know over which part of the country you are at any one time because you're moving so fast. We've done that. We're in space. We have all that energy now. We're in orbit and the rest of it is actually quite a lot easier. Thank you Michael. Can I first of all ask you how do you view the prospect of more than four months on Mir? Will you be lonely? No I don't think so. There are two other people going to be on board that spacecraft with me and that's the city Superlev and the station of Zutkin. I already know them well and have spent some time with them both in Russia where I live for a year and a half and then also on travel with them in Houston and that's a result I feel quite close to them and we've exchanged the messages before my arrival to the Mir and by email that is as well as also by radio from Russia from my house in Russia so I thought I'm going to be with friends and so I won't be feeling too lonely in any way. How confident are you that Mir will be safe because it has had some serious problems recently hasn't it? I don't know if other people see this way but I see the Mir is a very successful but old car in a way. It's been in space up to 13 years and they've been putting new parts in replacing old parts and if anyone's had an old car maintained it you know that as you keep on adding and repairing things continue to break around those new parts and that's really a fact a function of the fact that the Mir is living a lot longer than it was originally designed and yes there has been some problems but none of these are ever big showstoppers. They are serious to some extent so we can always continue to repair, improvise and work around those problems and the Russians have been extremely good at doing that today. Now this is all in preparation for the international space station which is due to be built soon in orbit. What do you see as the main purpose of the space station? Basically conceived to conduct science and operations development in space and a big big part of that is the endeavor of international countries working together to achieve those goals. As a result of an international cooperation in space you not only get a good science platform in orbit around the earth in which many many investigators from other countries can all work in or send experiments to you also get the experience of many countries working together and working in a great project which I see is leading us eventually out of Earth orbit to the moon and to Mars and to settle other planets. Now I put a question to the commander Charles Precourt what's it like having a British astronaut among you is he made of the right stuff? He's warning me that I'd better say yes to that one. Mike's a great asset to the NASA program and he brings a load of experience from a lot of different areas to us and you know he kind of hinted at the fact that the benefits of an international space station is that the fact that we bring together the talents of many different nations and in fact many different cultures and new ideas bring new ways of doing things and we discover new things together so yeah Mike is a great asset we're gonna miss him when we close the hatch but we're glad that he's representing us when we do. Mike again can I ask you what are you looking forward to most? Hard thing to answer because when you're looking at a flight that goes on four and a half months or more there's a whole number of events and of course you always choose the operational ones as being the most glamorous and therefore you say they're the most interesting. Well and there are one or two out there there are EVAs being done by the Russian cosmonauts they're also we're going to get in the Soyuz spacecraft at one point put on our spacesuits leave the space station mirror in the Soyuz and then fly around to the back side of the mirror and join up again with it so we'll get a nice fly around to the station I'm sure that will be a great thing a single event to look forward to but really the best thing is actually just living calmly and easily in space with two friends and spending time together. Houston Atlanta time back in we've got you on the downlink and Eileen Ecom is happy with the bag