 You probably never figured that in your wildest dreams that you'd be part of the largest spacecraft in history and also that you'd be awakened an hour early with a GPC-4 fail to sink. It's called, and you're right on both counts, never in my wildest dreams that I think either one of those things was going to happen. Great tune. Thanks for the wake-up music. You're more than welcome. Good. This is Vice President Al Gore. Can you hear me? Yes, I can, Mr. Vice President. Good morning. Well, good morning to you. Victor Stepanovich, Chirna Miridan, and I are here seeing you right in front of us on the wide screen, and we want to say congratulations on the historic success. You made that approach look so easy that I think you're now the envy of aviators around the world. Thank you, Mr. Vice President. It's a real pleasure to be here with you this morning, and we're very honored to have the opportunity to say hello to you. I had an awfully good crew on board Atlantis, and there's an awfully good crew over here aboard the Mir, and together we managed to make this all work. If I made it look easy, it's because of the great help that I had on board and the systems that we had and the way Atlantis really helped each other for a long time. We had a very good day yesterday. Well, there are a couple of unique things about this that haven't been mentioned. I think this is the first space flight with three commanders on board the same craft. Isn't that right? Yes, sir. That's very true. I'd like to salute the Mir 18 commander of Vladimir Dejarov and his crew, Mir 19 commander Anatoly Soloviev, and Mir 19 flight engineer Nikolai Boudarin, who now begin their stay aboard the Mir. And congratulations to all of you, especially to commander Dejarov and Mir 19 flight engineer Boudarin on making your first space flight on such a historic mission. And in addition, I understand that three of you are celebrating birthdays just during the time when the Mir and the Shuttle are linked up. Could that be true? Yes, sir. This is Charlie Precord. I had the distinct pleasure of celebrating my 40th yesterday as we talked with the Mir. It's a really great pleasure, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate a birthday than to do it with friends around the world, like our great friend here on board the Mir. Well, how'd they get the cake up there? Well, we had a chocolate cake that was provided by one of the astronauts back in Houston that was put in one of our food blockers. Marsha Ivins cooked that. She's very famous cook back home, and we all broke that out yesterday and enjoyed it. I'm going to give the telephone to Prime Minister Charna Myrdon now. We heard your ceremony yesterday, and it's great to see our two great flags side by side there in orbit above the Earth. The wonderful opportunity to work with and train with these two very talented crews near 18 and near 19 for a little bit over a year now, and it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with them. It's a pleasure to be together with them in orbit. Can you say to Hammer a few flags side by side and working together closely and working together very well in my days? Well, I'd like to say about that training, too. I'd like to say to Bonnie, I know you're fully trained for a stay on the Mir. I just want to remind you that according to the flight plan, you're supposed to come back with SDS-71. Now, yes, they might find one missing, but I guess they've got a seat for me, and it will be with great reluctance that I leave Anatoly Nikolai with the real pleasure of training with him in the Star City for a year and with all of the instructors there. It's a great pleasure, but I'm looking forward to helping bring us all home at the end of SDS-71. Well, that's great. And you know, we talked about Charlie's birthday yesterday, but I think it's Vladimir's birthday today, isn't it? So we want to say happy birthday to you, Vladimir. And before the two spacecraft are delinked, I think Norm is going to have a birthday on Monday, correct? Yes, sir, that's correct, but we're not going to talk about what birthday that'll be. Well, you added more time to your life in space than any other American in history on this mission, and we congratulate you for that. And I guess probably the most important birthday associated with this mission is the one of your daughter, who's two weeks ago, right? That's right, Mr. Vice President. I had a difficult past, I guess, of leaving an infant daughter behind and moving up to orbit. It's just two weeks already, I guess it's getting close to that. We've lost track of the time a little bit up here, but excuse me for not doing the night. It's just so much just fine. I'm looking forward to getting back to seeing her. Well, this whole mission is the birth of a new partnership between the United States and Russia. We've been working on our docking maneuver here with the Joint Commission. You've set a great example and created a great symbol for the progress that we can make together in the future. And Victor Sapanovich and I want to thank you again and congratulate you and wish you a safe, wish a safe stay to those who are remaining on the mirror and a safe journey home to the STS-71 crew. And thanks for all the work you've been doing. One of the first things that I guess we have to present to them is a traditional thing when visiting a Russian household and that's to bring gifts to the host. And Bonnie is going to present a couple of traditional gifts that we have. In Russian, to bring flowers to your host in odd numbers only. Due to space constraint, our odd number is one, but it represents many because of the affection and gratitude that we have for you as a crew. The other tradition that is enjoyed by many is the bringing of candy or chocolates or confetti to dinner. And this represents our gift to you. We know that you will miss your home in orbit, but we're very glad to have you on board the shuttle now. We've been waiting for you for a long time and we'll get you down to the ground soon. Thank you, Bonnie. Dave, I guess we figured as the next thing we would go ahead and join the two models. Obviously, symbolize our two craft, the mirror space station and space shuttle Atlantis. Looks like another perfect docking. You notice the eye-dye approach, the docking and then the free drift meeting. Dave, the next thing that we're going to do, and again, these are several of the ceremonial things that we have, we're joining together two medallions, both of which came up separately. A mirror, half of a medallion, which came up with the Russian side and a shuttle medallion that came up with us. We're going to move it a little closer to the camera, Dave, so maybe you can see it. Are you still with us? We're with you loud and clear and it looks like those medallions fit together just perfectly. We have a good view. Looks to be a very good fit to us. Dave, I also wanted to make sure we had some real genuine gifts to present to them, so we have a couple of small gifts to give to the Mir 18 crew at this time. And our pilot, Chishka, is going to start out with it. Copy. You notice I've picked up a Russian nickname along the way here. It is some little pins that have the STF-71 patch engraved on them, and we're going to present these to the three Mir 18 crew members. The Yanas, Urchin, Balshoy, Chis, Boots, Army, and the Boat, Balshoy. Charlie, those will be very memorable artifacts. Okay, Dave, I've got three watches, and they've got the STF-71 crew patch on them, and we'll present these as well. And again, on a personal note, it's been a great experience for me to be part of this soil effort, and just a wonderful experience all the way around to get to know my colleagues, to fly up with some and fly back with others. So it's a real honor to be part of this whole operation. The Houston, Atlanta, this next gift is probably counts in the fund category, very much in the fund category. We don't have an electric guitar up here, but we do have a guitar over on the Mir. We didn't bring them a new guitar to replace the old one, which we understand is getting kind of old. So we did the next best thing, and we bought a couple sets of guitar strings for them, and of course I suppose it's no question about what kind of guitar strings I would pick to bring up there. I don't know if you can read that from where you are, but of course they're Gibson guitar strings. Of course, Commander Gibson, we understand, and that's a very appropriate gift for you to give. So of course, what else would I bring them but Gibson guitar strings? Of course, we're well past Max-Q at this point. Unfortunately, we're past them. This is a watch that was specially released for this flight. The emblem of the cosmonauts preparation center is depicted on them. They are very original and beautiful. Let's take a closer look at them. At least they're not too old. We also have a few small solviers, which were sent to us from the United States. These are the medals that were given to us by the Soviet Union, which was sent to Russia by the Russian Air Force. These medals are depicted by the founder of the cosmonauts, Konstantin Eduardovich Salkovsky. These medals were sent to Russia by the Russian Air Force, which was actually sent to Russia by the Russian Air Force. We also have a gift from the Soviet Union. These medals were sent to Russia by the Russian Air Force, which was sent to Russia by the Russian Air Force. Thank you, Charlie. That's a good view of the pen. Before this minute, we talked a lot about cosmonauts, about achievements in cosmonautics. We sent medals that were named after the founder of the theoretical cosmonauts. We talked a lot about technical achievements and knowledge in the orbit of space, in the orbit of the Earth. We assumed that a person lives not only with technical ideas but also with the intelligence of a person. He, of course, lives both in the world of poetry and music. These arts help to dream a person and live a full-fledged life. Very soon, in Russia, there will be a big anniversary, the 200th anniversary of Pushkin. This is a great poet. And now there will be a big event around the world about the celebration of this anniversary. We have a world-class space complex where the medals are held. These medals are made of silver. And these medals are also confirmed by the diplomas that are held here by Gennady Mikhailovich. Each member of the crew will receive these medals. They will also be awarded to the President of the United States and to Russia for returning to Earth the spacecraft. That just about wraps us up and we have just a couple of other things that we're going to be doing, one of which is signing a certificate on board that Charlie, that's your job again, signing a certificate on board, documenting the time of docking both in Moscow, Decrete Time, as well as Mission and Ops Time aboard Atlantis, and we'll be placing all the signatures of all the crew members on this document and bringing it back with us. Copy. These are all treasured gifts appropriately given on the occasion of our International Orbiting Laboratory. I agree, Dave, and as we mentioned earlier in the thing, a number of these gift exchanges are ceremonial and are commemorative, and as well a number of them are personal. So it's a real pleasure to be here again participating in such a momentous event for all of us. Again, this has been the order of the day aboard Atlantis is packing equipment for the trip home that is being transferred from the Mir space station into Atlantis for the ride back. Most of that equipment, again, medical samples and experiments related to Norm Thaggard's stay aboard the Mir space station and also transferring supplies of ice versa from Atlantis that it has brought up for the Mir station. Among those supplies are the continuous transfer of water from Atlantis, which is produced in excess supply for Atlantis by its power generation systems transferring that water to the Mir station for use on board the station. Let me ask you a real practical question. Back down here, folks are still worried about taxes. So talk for just a minute about the practical value to the American taxpayer of this kind of a program and particularly the Mir space station. Ted, it winds up being perhaps a little bit of a roundabout answer but the taxpayer always wants to know what is it that I'm accomplishing and what is it that's coming my way and sometimes it's hard to see a purely direct result of it but I can tell you that the technology that we develop in doing endeavors such as this one, the technology that we learn how to do while we're here and the sorts of things that we have been able to accomplish lead to paybacks for all of us on the ground and unfortunately there are not always things that we can see or that we notice every single day when we're walking around but such things as weather satellites for example that have protected us since 1966 and we have never been surprised by a single tropical storm or hurricane since 1966. Every time you pick up a telephone call and make a phone call you're reaping some of the benefits of space research and there are a number of things that the taxpayer doesn't see every single day that we learn how to do and that we get better at accomplishing by every time we fly in space. Captain Gibson, I thank you very much. Please extend my thanks also to your Russian hosts and to your colleagues. Congratulations on an extraordinary mission. Kirsten, this is Nightline. That concludes the event. And Colonel Precourt, let's talk about what comes next for a minute. How does the decoupling take place? Describe to us what will happen. Well from our point of view it's very much a reverse operation of how we arrived here. We have a little bit of a different twist though for the undarking in that in order to show you some film about what this whole operation looks like the mere 19 crew who arrived with us will undark from the series first and they will take their series descent capsule and maneuver it away from the station and the shuttle while we are still docked with the shuttle then maneuver to a position where they can film the actual separation of the shuttle and then as we back away in the shuttle to a range of around 600 to 700 feet we will station keep and watch and film the redocking of the series capsule and it should allow us to share with everybody on the earth just how well we've been able to orchestrate operating together with these massive space vehicles 200 times currently joined here in orbit and we've learned an awful lot of how to be able to operate them together and we're really looking forward to sharing that with you and it's going to be an interesting operation