 We'll go ahead and go to questions here in Houston if you have no opening statement and we'll start with Mark Karo, the Houston Chronicle. Good morning. My question is for Dr. Sacco. You spoke before the mission with some enthusiasm about the opportunity to leave academia to pursue some research in space, including your experiment with zeolites. I just wonder how you assess that experience now. Was it worth the training? The launch delays? Has the mission been long enough for your work? And you might just comment on your zeolite experiment. Do you think it's benefited? A tremendous time up here. We've done some outstanding results. It's going to be difficult for me to comment exactly on what those results are going to be. They look pretty good so far, based on what I can see, but we really have to get back to the lab and use an electron microscope and some other pretty sophisticated equipment to look at just how well these crystals have grown. But on a quick look, based on what you can see with the eye, everything seems to be going very, very well. I'm really excited about that. I learned an awful lot about doing things in space, which is a little different than I had imagined, although I thought I had researched it pretty well. And that's what I'm here for. I'm here to learn and pass on to my other colleagues so in the future they can do well. If we do well with the zeolite space experiment, which I fully expect we will, I think that we can have some major breakthroughs down the road. It takes some time. We can't run a lot of experiments up here. We really need a station or something like that to spend a long period of time and be able to iterate off the results. But I feel that these preliminary results, based on what we had done in USM-I-1 and this is a follow-on to that, certainly are giving us a lead in the right direction as we look towards the space station era. Will Columbia stand by for Marshall PAO? TV here in Huntsville. My question is for Dr. Leslie. Dr. my question is to get you to please comment on the role that Marshall has played in this mission. We know that the folks here in Huntsville have overseen a lot of the experiments there. Comment on the support that you have received from the crews here on the ground at Marshall? Marshall has been quite extensive. As you know, a number of experiments came from Marshall. So that's a contribution from the science side. We did a lot of our training there at Marshall. There's a simulator of this laboratory module there. We spent a year and a half training there. And of course, during the flight itself, the payload operations control centers provided a tremendous amount of support in replanting our activities and keeping the science going. So Marshall has made a tremendous contribution to this flight. More on Berkey with the Huntsville Times. Dr. Leslie, if you could tell me what the benefit is of having gotten a chance to go up yourself and do your science instead of simply sending someone up that's not as familiar with it as you. I had the luxury to spend all my time on my experiment and watching the flows being generated. Unfortunately, I've got other duties here, so I don't have that luxury. But the ones I've seen look really great. As you know, we were trying to look for transitions and certain types of flows that occur on a rotating sphere. And I've seen those. I know there's a lot of data that's gone down. In fact, the instrument is running now as I look over at it. So even as we speak, there's data coming down. I'm going to look forward to spending the next year or so going over that data with the co-investigators. And we'll have a great look at it. Martin Berkey again. Even Al Pennington at one point said that he thought this mission might be sort of like watching grass grow. And that's okay. But I was wondering what you would tell your folks and friends in Huntsville about the importance of doing this basic science that's hard to illustrate to them personally. I'd be excited about watching grass grow. And scientists are excited about watching science experiments take place. So maybe I'm an optimist, but I think the number of experiments we've been doing here for the past two weeks is going to really make a difference. So I'm excited about it. And finally, Dr. Leslie, if you could talk a little bit, if you would, for Huntsville people about more specifically what it was like. I mean, when you first reached orbit, that very first moment that you began to experience space. It's, of course, going uphill just before the main engines cut off. We're around 3 Gs. And we're feeling that lying in our backs, we're feeling that through our chest. But it says we hit MECO, that is the main engine cut off. Suddenly things turned around. And I thought down was no longer where my back was, but it was wherever I put my feet. So for the next day or so, it took a little getting used to the slight disorientation. But you adapt after, I guess it's different for individuals. But it took me about a day or so to adapt to that. And it feels great now. This is Marcia Dunn of the Associated Press for anyone who'd like to answer. Earlier in the mission, some of you mentioned missing Pete and Sharers. What else are you looking forward to getting back to and realistically speaking? How much more time do you wish you had up there? Sharers are definitely going to be a welcome when we get back. But in addition to that, I guess a lot of us are missing our families. I've got a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and I'm real excited about getting to see her and hold her again after two weeks. But the mission has been fantastic. And as a matter of fact, I know personally I'm hoping for at least one wave off day so we can spend a little extra time up here. This is Vicki Vaughn with Reuters. I have a question for Katie and for Michael. Do you feel as if you had enough free time? I know there is free time built into everyone's schedule, but do you, each of you feel that it was enough? Did you have enough time just to do, just to look out the window and do the things that you wanted to do? Past days off during this 16-day mission. And those have been really great as much as I enjoy working on the science and I really do enjoy that every day. I mean you come into work and you gather all your stuff together before you go to the lab and come into the lab and start doing really interesting things. It's fascinating to watch and usually they have to make us go to lunch because we don't want to stop. But then I'll go back to the flight deck and look out the window and it really is a special vantage point to be able to look out at the Earth this way. And I find that you just have to take your breaks and go look out the window. I feel like I've done that probably never enough. I've tried to do it as much as I can, but I don't think there is any such thing as enough. So that's a hard question to answer. My situation was a little bit different as one of the orbiter crew members. I was not tasked on a minute-by-minute basis as was the payload crew. So my duties consisted mostly in the flight deck and I got a great chance to look out the window. The pace for me was very comfortable and I certainly got enough time off toward the end of the flight after I started to be a little bit more efficient about how I did things. I found that I had more time than I had in the beginning of the flight and I was actually looking for other things to do to help my crewmates, but you never get tired of the view and it's a great way to spend your free time. It's Bill Horwood, CBS News for Dr. Thornton. It seems like every time there's a space lab mission like this, reporters always ask you guys to talk about how it mirrors space station operations and things like that. I guess I've been struck during this flight by the role of tele-science, by the multi-user facilities that are on board. Could you talk about that theme in the sense philosophically this sort of flight really does, I think, mirror some of the operations on space station? Can you give me your thoughts on that? Some of the experiments on board that are precursors to space station experiments. The drop physics module, the surface tension experiments that we're doing are precursors. Some of the crystal growth experiments will be done on space station and what we learned on these short duration flights can help in the development of those facilities for longer term use on the space station. Some of the things that we've had on board this flight that are new, our ground air television and the electronic data transfer we've had up and down is not new on this flight but it's relatively new in the program and also the digital television where we send down six channels of digital video over one high data rate KU channel is new on this flight and I think that's the way space station is going to be. We have a lot of data to get to the ground and we're going to have to do it in this way. So this is kind of a path finder for the kind of operations we're going to have on the space station. This is Michael Cabbage with Florida Today and my question is for Kathy Thornton and Al Sacco. I know that people at Marshall are still in the early stages of reviewing the data for most of the experiments but have there been any results that jump out as something totally unexpected or anything that characterizes a major discovery at this point? Yeah, we do science hands on like we're doing it here. There's some surprises. We have seen some surprises in terms of the crystal growth and particularly what I've seen is some of the crystals have grown faster than I expected them to grow based on previous literature I had read. In other cases, crystals that I expected to grow slower did grow slower. I'm trying to analyze exactly what that is whether it has to do with the fluid dynamics or whether we have changed something. So some interesting things that Kathy will talk about in a minute on the combustion experiments and looking at flames burn as well. So yeah, we've learned an awful lot and that's what science is all about. Things change, you postulate something, you find out just how good you really understand things and then you move the situation forward in an iterative process and that's exactly what's working out here. There's been some significant surprises in terms of the rates in my mind anyways as a crystal grower and we'll be evaluating those. One of our fluids experiments cannot be done on the ground so everything up here was pretty much a surprise. At times the procedures that we had from pre-flight are essentially being rewritten after the first one or two runs of an experiment because of the things that were learned in those first one or two runs. And I think it's great that we can be flexible enough to handle that that all the folks on the ground can turn things around that fast, particularly in the drop physics module and the surface tension driven convection experiment. We saw a lot of new things that were not expected. Pete Colteri with the West Kentucky News for the Commander. By the way, thanks for waiting till I got back from vacation for lifting off. If everything goes according to schedule you'll be coming home Sunday and apparently the range is not going to be able to fully support you. What have you been doing to prepare for the landing? I was trying to take care of ourselves getting plenty of sleep. We've also been using the pilot simulator, a small it's a workstation in a laptop computer that allows us to practice our landings on orbit. Take a look at our symbology, the landing hut symbology before we actually get into the landing pattern. And we're looking forward to the landing. This is Marcia Dunn of the Associated Press again for anyone. If you were going to spend another month or two or three in orbit like on a space station I'm wondering what kind of amenities would you like to make your life more livable and maybe along those lines the ground to air TV helped in terms of your family contacts. Could you talk about livable, living in space? We love our food up here but what I've learned on this flight is I didn't spend enough time in my menu and I repeated too many items so variety on food I think is very important even things you think you're not going to like after eating the same thing several days in a row you're ready for a change. As far as other things it's very important to have a little bit of privacy and we've seen that with our sleep stations on board not all flights have them but that's very important and I think for station and when you start spending two or three or four months in space you've got to give people some privacy just so they can have a little bit of time alone and that'll make it much more productive and efficient in the long run. To that one thing that would be quite a bit different is we've been working pretty hard for two weeks this is kind of a sprint compared to a two month or three month or four month stand on orbit and so I think things would be a little bit different rather than have every minute planned out to the detail we would probably have some more general goals to accomplish in a day or even a week and we would probably not be working 12 hours a day either because that could be that'd be pretty tough to maintain over that time so the question becomes what are you going to do in your free time and I guess you need to come up with some sort of entertainment and you mentioned Ground Air TV that would be one thing certainly a selection, a greater selection of music and I personally would wish I would have brought a book along to read because sometimes it takes a little while to unwind after the days over and when you get into the sleep station without anything to read you kind of have to let your mind wander a little bit and it's a little bit tougher that way and I think I could have learned something and enjoyed myself at the same time. This is Vicki Vaughn with Reuters again I have a follow up to Marcia's question Michael I'd like to know what kind of music you did listen to or what was available up there but my question is if I'm hoping maybe two of you could answer this if you were suddenly put in charge of a new mission, USML3 what changes would you like to make either in terms of scheduling or the science of board, anything maybe any broad issue that you would like to address or change on an upcoming mission? A long question, let me see if I the beginning of it I think you asked what kind of music or what selection we have actually each of us got to bring a selection of music with us and I'm not sure but I don't think we've done any exchanging yet but that certainly is an option as far as what other changes we might entertain well I think we mentioned a few of them as I said I'd like to bring along a book I don't think we have any complains with the scheduling whatsoever for the length of mission that we have it was not too much work yet it was enough and I think we really got a lot of bang for our buck with the science teams so I think that's something that I would not change now as I said if we were going to stay a bit longer we might slack off a little because this is a pretty sprint type pace that would be tough to maintain over a longer period and I'll let Katie answer to do with USML3 it would be longer because once we got up here to do some of the experiments that we've been practicing and talking about and planning and trying to figure out exactly what is the best way to do them up here on orbit and when you actually get to do them it's just a wonderful thing I just feel like I'm up here doing what I came to do and that's great for me so it would be a longer mission certainly and I guess I would probably do a lot more exchanging on music I brought I don't know CBS for Commander Bauersox I guess the weather forecast isn't all that optimistic for Sunday landing here if you land Monday you'll break the shuttle record for a long duration flight can you just two things can you discuss A you're readiness to land after this long of a flight you know how you stay in shape I realize you exercise and use pilot but just your general views on landing after a long flight broader than that what is the state of knowledge now about how long you think pilots of the shuttle can stay weightless and still perform properly when you pull G's coming back down the first question the biggest concern that we have for a pilot that there may be a cliff out some out there somewhere whereas he's coming back his vestibular system causes him to get uncoordinated and he loses that programming that's been built into him over years of training and so he makes a mistake on the landing what we do to make sure that programming is good is we work on it a lot pre-flight I've got over a thousand approaches in the shuttle training airplane I've flown on a previous flight I've seen out the window the view looks just like the shuttle training airplane and the shuttle training airplane so I have high confidence that me is good as far as how long that my last I've got a feeling that it's probably out at 30-40 days I know I've gone as long as four months without flying the shuttle training airplane and I jump in and everything works fine I make reasonable landings on my first attempt but we're still working on a lot of unknowns with the microgravity aspect and that's why we're doing kind of a gentle build up we've gone from 11 days 15 days to 16 days and maybe one of these days we'll get out to 17, 18 or even longer I think that's going to be possible but we want to use our heads we want to do it in a common sense fashion with a nice gradual build up this is Michael Kappich with Florida today and my question is also for Commander Bauersox and it's kind of a follow up of an earlier question on all prior shuttle landings NASA has gotten C-Ban radar tracking support from the Air Force's eastern range but because of a Titan launch schedule for Saturday night at the air station this will be the first landing not to have that data available does that create any additional concerns for you? we're going to be using the attack hands and an alternate method of tracking we've looked into it and we think it's a reasonable thing to do of course at NASA we always like to do things the best way we possibly can and that's the C-Ban beacons when they're available but when we have to go to a fallback we try to be flexible and that's what we're doing in this situation just trying to be flexible with our operations and I think what we're doing is very reasonable Pete Caltieri with the West Kentucky News for KT this mission seems to be going real smooth as far as science is concerned in fact I kind of liken it to it's like the Apollo 17 of shuttle missions can you comment on how sophisticated you think this is this mission's been? yeah can you comment on how sophisticated you think this mission is in the way of being a complex science mission? experiments are very complex and I personally was surprised that things have gone as smoothly as they have usually if things go wrong they will at least something will go wrong with the number of experiments we have on board and we built a lot of contingency time into our timeline to take care of that well we haven't used any of that for contingency but we've done like a lot of data I think that we weren't expected to get so there are very complex experiments on board but they're working beautifully Bill Harwood, CBS for Katherine Coleman training for a space lab mission of course is a real sprint for a couple of years you guys work around the clock and then you finally get up on the mission and you work in dual shifts to do all this do you have a chance at all or have you had a chance yet to reflect upon this and to think about expectations versus reality and your general thoughts on how it lived up to your expectations excited I was and I just can't tell you how exciting it was and just how thrilled and that just lasted for days and days and every time I go and look out the window it comes back and every time I push off and float across the module it comes back it's very seldom that something actually surpasses your expectations especially when you have very big ones but this flight really has I'm not ready to come home yet this is Michael Cabbage with Florida today and this question is for anyone Debbie Brown in the Aerospace Education Office at JSC said the idea for holding the interactive sessions with high school students first was suggested by crew members and my question is who initially came up with this idea and do you think this is a worthwhile teaching method that should be repeated on future shuttle flights and on space station this to me because I'm the academician I guess in the group but really what happened is we were sitting around having a pizza one night and we're talking about how we all got here and in the course of the conversation decided that science isn't really for grief which is a general perception of our young people today and we thought we'd bring that home because some young people look up to the astronaut corps we'd bring it home by bringing some of the science we're really doing which is world class science and have some of the kids do very similar things so it was really an idea that was bred from all of us and Kathy Thornton went forward with it and pushed it and we were able to get it on board and I as an academician and an educator hope we'll do it in the future hope the kids benefited from it but I certainly did and I think it's very important in this country we keep these kids excited about math and science because that is what we'll bring this country as a leader into the 21st century and we all have to keep that in mind all the time and we had a lot of fun and I just hope the kids did as well you have said you had two dreams one to be a teacher and one to fly in space now you've done both do you have a third dream? yeah, I've fulfilled two of my dreams I have a lot more not the least of which is to grow some of the largest more perfect azalea lights that have been grown hope to do that on this flight I have a lot of things ahead of me as an individual I have a lot of development to do I need to talk to a lot of kids which I hope to do to get them excited about math and science and their future is out here as I look into the cosmos and see what's around I realize that the universe is really our playground and we need to take advantage of it we need to get our kids excited about it so that's one of the messages that I'm going to be coming home with Commander, how has Al been as a companion in space? I can't imagine a better payload crew member to have on board than Al of course Fred is equal they're both really good guys but Al brings a certain fire to the crew a certain spirit, he's a lot of fun he's always joking around and his wife makes great spaghetti Al, any chance of flight will be extended at all for a couple of days I don't know, I'm keeping my fingers crossed my legs crossed, my eyes crossed and everything else I can cross that will happen but right now we're planning on a normal landing and if we have some bad weather maybe we'll get an extra day we're all hoping for that because we all feel great none of us are tired we work hard and we have a lot of things we accomplish a lot of things and we like to just keep it going How about the training you received getting up there was the training exactly what it is like up there in space or have you been caught by surprise at all? Actually the training was surprisingly good it really was excellent they told us exactly what to expect sometimes we come up here and I was not expecting some things that they thought we were going to expect because I just felt that that probably wouldn't happen and you know, experience always wins out and a lot of these folks have experience that's what they learn from other crews and so what you have is training that really is specific for what you're doing and it's very, very good and I haven't had any surprises in terms of operationally I know Commander Ken Bauersocks is with us as well on the line and Ken, is Al pulling his load He's doing a great job he's keeping us all laughing his wife provided us with some great dehydrated spaghetti that she made at home and he's been doing an outstanding job on the science and one of the neatest things he's added to this fight is his excitement about the science that we're doing Al just beams up when he's got something going on in the glove box or on the DPM module or STDCE any of the units he's working on and that spear rubs off on the rest of us excited about the science too and Ken, I know you've got over 500 hours in space does it ever get routine or is it exciting every time you go up? It may be a routine for some people but it's not for me I love it every time I come up Earth is just as beautiful on this my third flight as it was in my first flight and I'm looking forward to seeing it some more How do you sleep? Are you tied in or you just pretty much find an open corner? No, no, we have little sleeping bunks they look like kitchen cabinets you sort of open a door and crawl in and they're very comfortable they have liners in them and you just sort of the ultimate water bed you just float there and I happen to listen to music all night or at least not all night for an hour so before I go to sleep sometimes do some reading and then drift off to sleep they're very comfortable What about any motion sickness, stomach problems, how have you been faring as far as your health goes? Yeah, I was surprised I got up here and expected to have maybe a little bit of an upset stomach and I feel so well the first few days and I had a couple of periods where I felt like I was not going to feel good but I just took the advice of my commander which was to slow down and to concentrate and just relax a little bit and it went right away and I didn't get sick the whole time I was up there in fact none of us did