 to inject the air core, how is the spacing and pinching? You're good to go, Fred. That's affirmative. And Fred, you might try to control that rotation. A great day for NASA and the shuttle crew. We are fortunate to bring you a very special interview tonight this morning. We take you now to the Space Shuttle Columbia where astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria joins us. And good morning to you and welcome to NBC Nightside. Can you hear me? Morning, Tanya. How are you? I'm doing fine. How about yourself? This is day six up in space. How are you and the other crew members doing physically? We're doing great physically, and we're having a ball. All right, having a ball. I like to hear that. Now, I want to make sure I get your title right. You are a mission specialist and flight engineer in charge of orbiter operations. Obviously, sounds like a pretty important job, keeping folks rolling around the earth there. What are your responsibilities on board the Space Shuttle Columbia? A little bit about the way we're divided up on the crew. We have seven people, also a lucky number, and we're divided into two shifts, a red shift and a blue shift. On each of those shifts, we have an orbiter crew and a payload crew. And on my shift, which is a blue shift, I'm the orbiter crewman, and we have two payload crewmen. I'm floating back here in the Space Lab module, which is where the payload crewman conducts most of the science on the flight. While they're doing that, somebody has to sort of mine the store up front. And that's my job. And the other two orbiter crewmen on the red shift, Commander Ken Bauersox and pilot Ken Rominger. So basically, while they're back here doing all the hard work, we're up there sort of navigating, taking care of the orbiter systems and doing a whole lot of looking out the windows. When do you sleep? In another part of the orbiter, just under the cockpit, we have what we call the middeck. And there are four sleep bunks in there. So only a maximum of four people have to sleep, at a time, and that's where we sleep. They sort of look like, actually a little bit like coffins. They have a sliding door, which keeps out the noise and the light pretty well, so it's not too bad. I have to ask you too, what do you see when you're looking out the windows? It's the most incredible view I can imagine. I don't know how many of you have seen these IMAX movies on the really big screens. And those do a pretty good job. But when you get up here, it's at least 10,000 times better. It's really breathtaking. It's fantastic. Tell us a little bit about the experiments that we know will be useful in space station missions and also for medicinal purposes. Can you tell us a little bit about those, the oil and water experiments and food experiments? I can tell you a little bit about that. Let me just give a couple of examples. We have one experiment called zeolite crystal growth, which is an experiment to be able to try to grow better zeolite crystals. Zeolites are used a lot on Earth for such things as chemical sieves and especially used in the petroleum industry to do refining of petroleum. So if we can develop a better, more perfect crystal and understand how those properties work, we can actually gain a lot of benefits in that regard. Secondly, another kind of crystal that we're growing in space is a protein crystal. When the pharmaceutical companies manufacture drugs to combat infections or ailments, they need to know as well as they can the structure of these protein crystals so they can design the drugs to fit into these sort of nooks and crannies. And in space, in the absence of gravity, we can grow these crystals in a much more perfect sense that we can on Earth. So hopefully, we'll be able to use these to put them to good use with the medical community. I understand that you're divided into teams, a red team and a blue team. Explain to us what exactly the significance of that is. There's no significance to the colors, of course. It's just a way of calling ourselves one thing or the other. But we're just divided into two teams to be able to work around the clock, basically. So while the blue team is awake, the red team is asleep and vice versa, we do have about a four-hour period at the end and beginning of each day where we're both awake. But the majority of the work that we do in a laboratory goes on during those eight-hour periods. Can you explain for those of us who have never experienced it what weightlessness feels like? Well, that's a tough question. I could actually show you. Hang on. A lot of. I'll tell you that the closest experience I can accord it to is it's sort of like scuba diving, only the air is very unviscous, very fluid, and you can, it's effortless to move around. You just put the slightest force on something and you find yourself floating across the laboratory very gracefully. It's really, it's a great experience and it's hard to describe this feeling, but it's wonderful. Well, I know you're a rookie. Is this everything you had hoped it would be? I'll tell you, Tonya, I thought that it would be a hard thing to be able to reach my expectations because they were pretty high, but this has far exceeded what I expected. It's been a blast and I'm looking forward to the next few days and looking forward to doing this many times again. Okay, on a personal note, I have a little background information here on you. I understand you're 37 years old. You're the first Spanish-born astronaut in orbit. You graduated from Mission VAO High School in California. So two questions in regards to this. When you were back in high school in California, did you dream that you would some day be doing this? And for all the youngsters out there who aspire to become astronauts, how did you do it? A lot of people that I work with, a lot of fellow astronauts who actually did dream about doing this since they were small children even before high school, I had a little different circumstance. I want to be an architect when I was in high school and sometime between then and the age of 25, which is when I really set my sights on this is when I got converted. The way I would do it to all those who aspire to be like my friends who already knew what they want to do when they were very young kids, I would say only do it if it's something that you really want to do, something you're very good at. It has to be something that you like. So make sure that it's something that you like and then just work your hardest in school. Do the best you can. But always try to keep a perspective on the fun part of life and something enjoyable as well. Well, I think that's a great way to wrap up this interview and we thank you so much. Michael Lopez, I'll agree, an astronaut aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia joining us from space here on NBC Nightside. This is Mission Control Houston. We're now looking at live television. The Montreal and Palin Bay cameras. We're looking at television from a television camera that's mounted in the front forward portion of Columbia's cargo bay, looking back towards the laboratory module. Below Columbia, the coast of the Mediterranean Sea as the spacecraft is 170 miles above Northern Africa. R2 got a switch throw for you. BC on Cirque Pump number two. Yeah, we're starting to pick it up in the camera too. 39 degrees is really great, isn't it, Sox? Should get on a regular schedule. Can you expound on how good 39 degrees really is? This view again, showing the Nile and the Red Sea as Columbia continues south. Current altitude, 170 miles. This is part of the United States Microgravity Laboratory. But tonight, our thoughts are with the national pastime. To the brave and to the Indians, good luck in Game 5 of the World Series. With the water from the mitifiers inside the laboratory cabin. The dump's now beginning report. Again, no water be dumped from the lab, expected to take about 15 minutes or so. The port or left-hand payload bay door of Columbia was fully opened for this dump to allow better clearance and ensure that no ice or water collected on the edge of the door in its partially closed position that it occupies for the majority of the flight. That door opening procedure went very well. Once the dump's completed, the door will be closed again to its partially closed position, the position it occupies to help protect against a space debris impact on the interior radiators in a freon cooling loops along the inside of that left-hand door. Columbia's orientation during much of this flight to gravity gradient orientation, one that has a natural stability to it and that minimizes jet firings. And so while we bring video to the ground from the Geophysical Fluid Flow Cell Experiment science video for that team of researchers that are looking at very complex fluid flows, modeling very complex fluid flows as we can see, at the same time, we have an opportunity to take a look inside the space lab module with TV coming from both sources by means of the high-pack digital TV system. That's affirmative, Al. Let me try to get a reading on where it might be. Or GFFC. And it has been over the course of the mission now, it has been running a rather large variety of scenarios or sets of conditions to model particular phenomena involving fluids. And this video coming down now from Columbia is providing some of the indications of what's going on in the scenario that is currently underway. The GFFC falls in the area of fluids physics research, but it's also one which provides insights into specialized problems of having to do with our environment and having to do with conditions on other bodies in heavenly bodies in the universe such as the sun and other stars and as well as planets such as Jupiter. Now, at the moment, we're taking a look at one of the other areas of science activity and we're getting some video with the shuttle's camcorder video, shuttle's camcorder being the source of this video to take a look at one of the areas of protein crystal growth research. Go ahead. 287 degrees and then it left me at five turns 133 degrees. Copy that, Kathy. And Kathy, we've got our video back and wonder if you can video select over to IR so you can take a look there.