Feature
Preflight Interview: Bill McArthur
09.12.05
Image at right: Expedition 12 Commander and NASA ISS Science Officer Bill McArthur. Credit: NASA
A: Interestingly enough, it is not what I always wanted to do. When I was a young boy I wanted to become a soldier. My dad had served in World War II and was in the Army Reserves. In my memory, he’s bigger than life -- he’s the John Wayne character of my boyhood. I wanted to be a lot like my father and, therefore, I wanted to join the Army, which I did. That was reflected in my application to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do that. But I always had an interest in things that flew. You may have, you may have seen a North Carolina license plate. I’m a North Carolina native. North Carolina license plates say “First in Flight” and, of course, North Carolinians are very proud of the fact that the Wright Brothers’ first flights took place in our state. So there was always this boyhood interest in flying. I built rockets when I was a, a kid and flew those, and flew model airplanes. And while I was a cadet at West Point it was near the end of the Vietnam conflict. Of course, aviation was a very important part of the Army’s participation in Vietnam, so I saw that I did have an opportunity, as an Army officer, to fly. I seized that opportunity as soon as I could. I flew helicopters for a number of years. Then in 1978, I read where an Army major, Bob Stewart, was selected in the first group of Space Shuttle astronauts. I scratched my head, I found that a bit curious as, as I’ve noticed many people do when they say, “Astronaut? Army?” And so, I saw that I would have the opportunity, or opportunities, to apply to NASA while simultaneously doing the things that I really wanted to do in the Army. So I continued to fly, expanded my education, got a master’s degree in aerospace engineering, had a chance to go to the Navy Test Pilot School, and all things that I wanted to do as a, as an Army officer and as an Army pilot. Yet evidently those were things that NASA felt were worth taking a look at. So eventually I was able to get into the astronaut program.
You look back at your life up to that point, was there a person, or maybe more than one, that you’d say was maybe your inspiration or your hero?
Well, there have been a few people. Of course I mentioned my father, who eventually attained the rank of brigadier general. It’s always been funny when people would say, oh, you’re in the Army; McArthur -- any relation to Gen. McArthur. Well, not the one that you’re talking about. After my dad passed away my mother remarried. Both she and my stepfather were just so supportive, not so much in pushing my, my sister, brother, and me toward specific goals, but encouraging us to set goals and convincing us that we could achieve anything we set our minds to. I had, I think, a tremendously supportive family life, supportive upbringing, and again, my parents, my step dad, they, they all just raised us, maybe to be, I don’t necessarily want to say overachievers, but they, they did raise us all with a belief that we could achieve the most ambitious goals.
You have flown in space before, of course; you’re more aware than most people of the dangers of doing that. And yet here you sit, ready to go do it again. Tell me why you think that whatever we get or learn from spaceflight is worth the risk you’re willing to take?
Well, to steal a few words from Mark Twain … He wrote that in 20 years you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did do. And, in part from a personal level I just cannot imagine a more interesting, a more exciting, a more thrilling profession, and a more rewarding profession. I mentioned I was interested in, in model airplanes and rockets and things as a little boy, and was absolutely fascinated by my favorite genre, science fiction. I just am a voracious reader of science-fiction books. Especially as a youngster, I just couldn’t get them enough. And so, to a certain degree, on a personal level, flying in space is just a realization of boyhood fantasies, if you will. But let’s look at it from a less selfish standpoint ...
And you’re not a boy anymore.
Well, I’m not a boy anymore, but fortunately, I haven’t been forced to grow up yet. I’m afraid that might be in store for me after this flight but, we’ll put that off till we come to it. At the same time this is an opportunity to pursue personal goals and achieve personal satisfaction. I think we need to look to the future. Wilbur Wright said something along the lines that it’s not too difficult to look to the future; it’s easy for us; it’s right in front of us. We can look ahead and see that the future is wonderful, so let’s go ahead and open the roads and move ahead. Because if we don’t look ahead, if we don’t push the envelope, if we’re not pushing the boundaries of discovery, that means we’re standing in one place. As a soldier I always hated marching in one place because you just weren’t, you weren’t accomplishing anything. And so I think space exploration has been this tremendous catalyst for the development of technology in this country, and in the world. It’s been a tremendous catalyst for us to make the human condition better. We’ve developed the tools, the technology, to in fact improve human conditions, and certainly the challenge to implement what we’ve learned and to share those benefits with everyone. The ISS program, as did in the Apollo-Soyuz program and the Shuttle-Mir program, ought to serve as a model in the world about how countries come together and cooperate for a common goal. I know we get frustrated. We look at dangerous areas and, throughout the world, areas of conflict, areas of natural disaster, areas in which there are man-made disasters. Everyone understands that if we could bring the planet, or all the nations of the planet Earth, together to work toward solving these problems. We could in fact do that, and we could improve the human condition globally. And why is it so difficult to do? I think it’s so difficult because each nation, each group of people, has a different idea of what the common goals should be. Well, we look in the space program, the international effort such as with ISS, and we see that it’s a little easier for us to define these goals. It’s almost as if we are a laboratory experiment on international cooperation. Our goals are very specific. They’re, they’re defined by very challenging technological requirements—you have to put a vehicle in orbit at an altitude of 250 miles and it has to be traveling 17,500 mph—those are very well-defined goals. The way the international community, the way that consortium of nations that we call the International Space Station program, solves those problems can be a model for the world as a whole.
That’s a look at some of your reasons for what you do, but what you do impacts the people that are closest to you. How does your family deal with the, the dangers that are a part of your job?
One of the things my family does that’s most remarkable is they don’t show me that they are worried. I don’t know if that’s fair for me to let them do that, for them to sort of suppress any uneasiness that they have. It goes back many, many years. My wife and I were engaged, and we were talking about when we would get married. I had orders to go to flight school. I was stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., very, very close to where we both grew up. She was in college in North Carolina, at Salem College. She said, "Well, should we wait for a year, until after I graduate, to get married?" I told her we could do that, but I was going to flight school right after she graduated and so if we waited to get married she was going to have to come find me wherever the Army had sent me. It wasn't a very chivalrous thing to say, but she and my daughters have always recognized that some of these things -- operational flying in the Army, test pilot school, becoming an astronaut -- were such a deep part of the fabric that makes Bill McArthur Bill McArthur. By supporting these things it allowed me to continue to be the person that, well, I think they love but certainly, they tolerate. They’ve just been tremendously supportive. As I’m preparing now to leave for Russia and then our launch out of Kazakhstan, I can see my wife her putting her “Army wife” hat back on and marshalling our daughters, our, my son-in-law, and saying that Dad now has space tunnel vision again. He sees at the end of this tunnel a rocket sitting on the launch pad, and it, it’s harder and harder for him to see us in his peripheral vision. In every way they can imagine, they are trying to just take any concerns away. I’m able to, gosh, just, abandon my responsibilities in more and more areas because they have volunteered to have just fewer and fewer expectations -- I don’t want to call them demands -- but, they’re allowing me to divest myself of many of the responsibilities that I ought to discharge as a husband and father and focus on the flight.
You’ve flown to the International Space Station before. How did that experience factor into your preparation for this flight?
Image at left: The International Space Station as Bill McArthur saw it in 2000 during STS-92. Credit: NASA
Well, I’d like to go back even a little further. It’s, it’s almost as if every one of my spaceflights has been preparing for this one. The first mission I was on was devoted to life sciences research, medical, biological research. And so it was like a 14-day miniature space station in the back of the Shuttle payload bay. That really whetted my appetite for living and working in space. My second flight was as part of the crew of Atlantis, STS-74, which we docked to the Russian space station Mir. Jerry Ross and I trained to do some EVAs on that flight, in case some of our tasks didn’t work out using, using robotics. We were, of course, relieved that everything worked as planned, but disappointed we didn’t get to do a spacewalk. But then came STS-92, going to the International Space Station. The crew as a whole performed four spacewalks. We had extensive robotics operations, and of course a rendezvous and docking with the Space Station. To me it has led up that the natural progression would be go to space, do some research; learn how to do a rendezvous and docking...going to a space station; go to the next-generation space station, rendezvous and dock, and conduct EVAs and robotics ops. I think it’s been great preparation in a couple of areas. First on STS-92, we had to train and gain proficiency in the same skills that are going to be required on the ISS. I mean things that seem very simple, just working inside a bigger volume than you find inside the Shuttle. Opening and closing hatches periodically … you know, things that aren’t required inside the Shuttle because the volume is a lot smaller. But more than the skills, it really honed a keen interest in actually going to that Space Station that we helped begin construct on STS-92, and go up there and live and work on it, and hopefully see it become even larger.
Anything in particular that you’re looking forward to seeing again when you get back there, like, maybe, your handiwork from the first time?
Well, I do take a lot of pride -- that’s a terrible thing -- but I do take a lot of pride in seeing pictures of ISS and seeing the space-to-ground antenna, the Ku-band antenna, and knowing that Leroy Chiao and I installed that antenna and deployed it. So, yes, I think maybe there is some sense of ownership. You’re going to a place that’s part, that’s part of you. I’m pretty excited about that. I’ve always felt, on my spaceflights, that they ended just a little too early. I just have a suspicion that I won’t feel that way after this one, but to me the big difference is whether you are visiting space or whether you live in space. On my first mission I thought there was a dramatic difference between the first seven days we were on orbit and the second seven days, the last, the last half of the flight, because you could see that your instincts that you were transitioning from, instincts appropriate to being on the ground and having gravity to instincts that were more appropriate to being in space. An example I like to use is you’re doing some mechanical work, removing some bolts. Well, think about having a flat tire and putting the spare on -- OK, you take the hubcap off, put it down, start remove, remove, removing the lug nuts, and what do you do with them? You put them right in the hubcap because you don’t, you don’t want to lose them in the grass or on, on the side of the road and you want to know where they are. You get on orbit and you start removing a bolt. I got my wrench and so you just put the wrench down because, you know, that’s where you put your lug wrench when you’re changing a, changing a flat tire. Now you pull the bolt off and hopefully you don’t do the same thing with it, but at some point you reach for that bolt or you reach for that ratchet, and it’s just not there anymore. So you have to recalibrate just your instinctive way of working and remember that there is no up, there is no down, and if you lose something you can’t go to the store and buy another one.
Tell me, in summary, what are the goals of this particular Expedition to ISS?
In its very broadest sense, our goals are first to maintain the operational state of the ISS; to conduct research that is targeted toward enhancing our capability to live and work in space, because we have to be able to do that, and more and more we need to be able to do that with less reliance on the ground if we’re going to leave low Earth orbit; and third, we would like to see expansion of this unique laboratory environment so that future crews will have an even more capable Space Station to work in.
What’s the most challenging aspect of the mission?
I think the most challenging aspect is going to be exercising patience. When you go up on a Shuttle mission the timeline is choreographed very finely, because the Shuttle’s time on orbit is fairly limited -- a week and a half, two weeks. A tremendous amount of work can be done in that time, but the Shuttle’s presence is so valuable we really need to maximize productivity during that time frame. If you have a question, you get an answer quickly. The next day’s activities can be significantly re-timelined. For example, on STS-114 they replanned the third EVA so that Steve Robinson could go out on the end of the arm, underneath Discovery and remove those gap fillers. On Station it’s more an issue of being on orbit for the long haul. They call us in and they brief us; they say, look, remember, this is not a sprint; this is a marathon -- pace yourself. I think one of the biggest challenges is going to be pacing ourselves. If we call up at the end of the day and tell the ground this experiment just didn’t work exactly the way we anticipated, well, they may not be able to give us an answer on the spot because, being an International Space Station, the scientist, the principal investigator, may not be in this country, very likely not in Houston and not in the Mission Control Center. Again, this really is showing the International Space Station as a tremendous representation of international participation. Also we’re drawing on the capabilities greater than the ones we have that are homegrown. There are some other things that may be more specifically challenging. We’ve got a couple of EVAs planned, with the potential for a third. The two EVAs in the U.S. spacesuit, the EMUs are contingent upon STS-121 flying, so we’re not certain exactly when those are going to occur. Those uncertainties may prompt us to look at whether we have an opportunity to do those EVAs before STS-121 flies; we don’t know, but that would present a pretty significant challenge to us. Based on some of the laboratory equipment that was carried to orbit by STS-114, there are some significant reconfigurations that we’re going to do in the U.S. laboratory. Very soon we’ll have new liquids units for the Russian Elektron oxygen generator, and performing maintenance on those systems is vitally important to maintaining our ability to operate the Space Station and ensuring that it, it is, it is fully capable for the future Station crews that go up.
I’m going to hit on some of those topics. Let me get you to take us through chronologically. You start the mission launching in a Soyuz spacecraft. You and Valery will be joined by another spaceflight participant, Greg Olsen. Tell me a little bit about that portion of your mission.
We’re now currently scheduled to launch from Baikonur. It’ll be of great historical significance and, and I think just a darn cool thing for, from an astronaut standpoint, from the same launch pad, from which Gagarin was launched back in 1961. I’m not sure any of us are going to yell out “Poyekhali!” or “Let’s go!” the way he did, but certainly, that’ll certainly be in our hearts. And so Valery, Greg, and I will launch from Baikonur. Two days later we’ll arrive at the Space Station. We’ll stay with the Expedition 11 crew for a week. Greg will then return with the Expedition 11 crew.
Let’s talk about the EVAs, and regardless of when they happen. What are the jobs that you’re looking at doing during these spacewalks?
Image at right: STS-92 Mission Specialist Bill McArthur hitches a ride on the Shuttle's robotic arm during a spacewalk in October of 2000. Credit: NASA
I mentioned that Shuttle flights are very tightly choreographed, and there are certain EVA tasks, like the CMG replacement that 114 did, which really should be performed when the Shuttle is present, due to the additional robotics capability, the additional people on board. And so there, these are very highly prioritized EVA tasks. There are other EVA tasks that need to be done. Because they are not so critical on Shuttle presence, they tend to fall a little lower on the Shuttle priority list and have started to become known as “homeless tasks” because they don’t fit on any Shuttle mission. So we’ve taken a collection of these homeless tasks, which we think really are important, but we can’t squeeze them into the EVAs when the Shuttle’s present. So these are some that we’re going to perform. STS-114 was going to remove a suitcase-sized box, called a rotary joint motor controller. Unfortunately, doing the gap filler didn’t leave them enough time to remove this failed rotary joint motor controller, or RJMC, from S1 [Starboard One Truss]. We were just going to put a new one in but now we’ll go out, hopefully, remove the old one, put the new one in. The camera on the MBS, the [Mobile] Base System, has failed. One of our tasks is to go out and replace this camera. You may recall during Expedition 9 they replaced a circuit breaker on the outside, which was supposed to provide electrical power to one of the CMGs. Well, it’s failed again, so we’ll go replace that. There’s a camera out on the P1 truss, out on the port side, on the lower side. It’s called the P1 lower outboard camera; it was hoped that 114 would be able to install that but again their tasks for the third EVA got reprioritized. So we think that will climb very high on our priority list, and we’ll go install this camera out on P1. It’s hard to imagine how blind you are inside the Station to see yourself -- the Station -- these type of camera views are critically important to doing robotics operations. That’s the big advantage to getting these cameras repaired, because we will greatly enhance our capability to do the robotics tasks that are critical on the subsequent missions, [STS]-115, 116, 117 and 118.
You anticipate my next area of questioning. STS-115 and 116 are crews that you’ve had some training with; they’re scheduled to arrive during the time that you’re there to bring up new components of the integrated truss structure to the Station. Tell me about the P3 and P4, and, and P5 and, and how that’s going to expand the Station’s capabilities.
Well, P3/P4 is, they’re, they’re actually pre-integrated on the ground, so they go up as, as, as a single unit. Brent Jett’s crew on STS-115 is scheduled to install them. Steve MacLean and I will be the robotics operators. Steve will be actually operating the arm and I’ll be helping him out. What that’s going to do …, well, let’s, let’s think back at the current configuration of the Station. We have this truss that sticks vertically out of the Station, it’s got the two sets of U.S. solar arrays which provide the majority of the electrical power for ISS. Well, P3/P4 is similar to P6 in that it has the two solar array wings on it, and 115’s, you know, perhaps primary task is to take P3/P4 up. The Shuttle crew will remove it with the Shuttle arm and then hand it off to the Station arm, and then we will attach it to the port, the free port end, of the Station, which is the end of P1. You know, don’t ask, there is no P2 -- that goes back in history to previous versions of the Space Station that we were looking at 15, 16 years ago -- and so we’ll attach,P3/P4, and then deploy those solar arrays, greatly expanding the capability of the Station not only to produce power, but to have redundancy in power production. Now, if we lose power from one of the solar wings that’s out there, we lose the ability to power certain parts of the Station, and so those would be pretty serious failures as far as Station operations. They’re not going to put the crew at risk, but we lose capability when that happens. As the Station gets built out and we ultimately have the four sets of solar wings out there, we have the ability to cross strap, if you will, the ability to reroute the power from one solar array, to, let’s say, items powered by a solar array whose structure might not physically fail but whose power channel, the power conduits may have failed. And so, we’re going to begin to gain much greater capability for electrical power. Why is that important? Because, by golly, everything takes electricity on orbit: you want to drink water, it takes electricity; you want to stay cool, it takes electricity; you want to breathe, it takes electricity. And so, you know, electricity is really the lifeblood of the Station. Now, [STS]-116 comes up. It’s going to carry a fair amount of supplies as well, but it will also carry a very small truss section called P5. P5 -- you know, we do at least get the numbers in order -- P5 will mate to the free end of P4, and then subsequently P6, which is the one the, the array that comes vertically out of the Station, will then be relocated out to the end of P5, and that will ultimately complete the port side of the Station. Well before that happens we will have started building out the starboard side, adding in S3/S4, S5, and then ultimately S6.
You are going to have a special role to play during the time that those Shuttles arrive, and we saw during STS-114 just how valuable the photographs that the Station crew took of the Shuttle as it approached [were]. Tell me about your preparation for that and how you see that contributing.
You’re, of course, talking about the Station crew photographing what we call the R-bar pitch maneuver -- whew, boy -- or RPM; it’s this NASA stuff. Well, R-bar is much simpler than it sounds. You know, you remember a little bit of geometry and the line from the center to the outside of a circle is called the radius. So we take this imaginary line from the center of the Earth and it goes up to the Station, and we call that the R-bar because it’s the radius. And, the [Shuttle] comes up, comes up there and as it pitches around, you know, as it, as it pitches around, it’s called the R-bar pitch maneuver. The purpose of that, as Eileen [Collins] and her crew did on 114, is to expose the underside of the Space Shuttle, which the Shuttle crew can’t see directly, to expose it to the Space Station at a distance of about 600 feet, and we try to do a pretty thorough photo-documentation, using our on board cameras, one with a 400mm lens, one with an 800mm lens, and that means we get pretty significant magnification of the underside. We’ve done a lot of training in the Virtual Reality Lab here at the Johnson Space Center, over in Building 9 where the full-size mockups and, as I said, we’ve done a lot of training in how we do this photo survey. The intent is to then downlink, hopefully, high-quality, high-resolution digital photos of the thermal protection system of the Shuttle to the ground, and so that the TPS, thermal protection system, experts on the ground can do a detailed analysis and look for things like protruding gap filler, look for any, any off-nominal conditions in the thermal protection system, the tiles of the Shuttle, so that then, NASA can make intelligent decisions about how we best ensure the safe return of a crew.
You referred earlier to another of the major areas of, of any Expedition to the Space Station, and that’s science. And the primary focus of U.S. science is research into how people can live and work safely in that environment. Tell me about some of the human life sciences experiments on your flight that, which you are going to be ...
I’m just sore already from the testing that we did the last two days!
[Laughs.]
We’re looking at a couple of areas. One is how we maintain adequate human performance. If you think about it, if you’ve seen pictures of crews, particularly returning on the Soyuz, they, they are, after a long stay on board ISS, they are lifted out of the capsule, if it’s sitting upright -- if it’s on its side again, they’re sort of helped out -- immediately put in chairs, and then carried to a medical evacuation tent. There’s no attempt …, the crews are discouraged from trying to walk immediately after landing. It’s because our muscles are deconditioned and our sense of balance is no longer effective. It’s very easy to get dizzy after having been in space for a long period of time due to the effects of gravity on the inner ear. Well, that’s going to be pretty tough if, after a six- or nine-month flight, you land on Mars and you can’t stand up. So, we really, if we want to leave low Earth orbit and go to the Moon, well, it’s only one-sixth of Earth’s gravity; well, Mars, which is one-third of Earth’s gravity, we really need to be, need to have the techniques and the tools, the exercise protocols, the medical procedures, that will ensure that when that crew lands on Mars, just a tremendous distance from the Earth, that they are physically fit to start working quickly. One, because, I mean, what a tremendous adventure! We really want to get the maximum benefit out of that, out of what will be a tremendous human accomplishment to set foot on another planet, and we want the crews to be healthy. So, what are we doing, to address that? Well, let’s talk about what some of the effects are of being in space. You know, you walk around and all your muscles are getting some workout. Well, in space -- and this is a good thing about being up there -- you don’t walk around: we float around. And it is so much fun, and it’s a pleasant environment, but your muscles immediately begin to atrophy. And so we need to figure out how to maintain conditioning. There are two things we do on orbit: one is, we do exercise almost religiously -- we spend a lot of time each day exercising. In order to understand the effects, or the effectiveness, of that exercise, we do a lot of testing preflight; we’ll do some testing on orbit; we do a lot of testing postflight. There’s an experiment in which I hope to participate called Foot. My right leg and running shoes on each foot are instrumented. I’ve got muscle activity sensors in various places on my leg and little boxes recording data. It makes me look a little bit like the Borg from Star [Trek]: The Next Generation. What we’re trying to do is measure the effectiveness of all your activity on orbit and compare it to your normal activities on the ground, to see how close they are to providing a similar workout, a similar activity level, to what we have on the ground. Now there are some other effects that can be even more serious on orbit. One is that in the absence of the stress of gravity, your musculoskeletal system, you know, besides the muscles becoming weaker, the bones, your actual skeleton, the bones start losing minerals over time, in some of the major weight-bearing bones, because they don’t see the stress to which they’re normally exposed, they’re losing calcium, they become brittler. You know, gosh, I’d hate to have really brittle bones and kind of hop off the ladder on Mars and have one break. So we’re studying the effects on bone density. But now where’s that calcium going? Well, it’s going into the blood, filtered through the kidneys, excreted in the urine. OK, minerals, your blood, kidneys, urine -- you know, if you’ve ever had a relative or know someone who’s developed kidney stones, that all ought to sound familiar. We’re concerned that people in weightlessness have a higher risk of developing kidney stones. I’ve heard they’re pretty painful. Three months on the way to Mars I’d certainly hate to be the astronaut who has developed a kidney stone. So on this mission, we’re participating in an experiment called Renal Stone. Some of us are taking potassium citrate, some are taking a placebo, and we’re going to measure the effectiveness of the potassium citrate on orbit to try to determine if in fact it is effective at reducing the substances in your blood that may lead to the formation of kidney stones.
If you had to -- and you do, because I’m asking you to -- look at all of Expedition 12 right now, what will have to be accomplished for you to consider that flight a success?
Above all that we launch and land safely; that we conduct this mission in a safe manner. Having said that, I think for it to be considered a success my criteria is that we will complete meaningful science during our stay, and that we will leave the Station more capable than we found it.
Your mission to the International Space Station starts as the Space Shuttle returns to flight and resumes Station assembly, but also as it moves into what we believe will be the final few years of its operation. Tell me about the Space Shuttle’s contribution to this next stage of the Station’s life.
If we are going to significantly expand the capability of the Space Station, and I think that’s vitally important, the Shuttle is absolutely essential. We have tremendous amount of hardware located in Florida, it’s ready to go the Space Station—it can’t get there without the Space Shuttle. We talked about the truss segments, P3/P4, P5, S3/S4, S5, S6 -- they don’t get to space without the Space Shuttle. Then we have the European Columbus orbiting facility, the ESA laboratory; Kibo, the Japanese laboratory, the cupola, Node 2, perhaps Node 3 -- they don’t get to space without the Shuttle. Now, are we doing important work on Space Station right now? Yes, we are. Think how much more we can accomplish if we go ahead and expand the research capability of the Space Station by adding the additional laboratory modules. Well, we can’t add them without putting Node 2 on; we can’t power them, we can’t cool them, without completing the truss build-out. So, if we’re serious about optimizing the research and the work we do on ISS, which I think is vitally important to leaving low Earth orbit, we need to complete the Space Station. And we cannot do that without the Space Shuttle.
Of course, building the Space Station in Earth orbit isn’t the ultimate goal. It’s just a step toward a goal. From the perspective of someone who’s about to leave the planet for six months, tell me how you see the International Space Station helping achieve the Vision for Space Exploration and paving the path to the future of exploration.
Well, continuing in this, I just am so grateful that you drew out the rest of the answer that I started to your earlier question. So, we build the Space Station ... As we discussed earlier, we don’t have the answers we need in order to send people to Mars yet. We know a lot of the questions, but we need to have the Space Station to find the answers to those questions, to keeping people healthy for a long duration on orbit. As I mentioned before, I think we cheat a little bit right now -- we launch from Earth, we spend a long time on orbit, and we go back to Earth where we have this cadre of wonderful people there to scoop us up and keep us warm and safe. It’s almost like we’re the child that’s peeked out of the womb, gotten a little bit scared, and we’ve gone back in where it’s nice and safe and comfortable. Well, we need to give birth to true interplanetary space exploration. And, I would say the Space Station is the midwife that’s going to allow us to do that. We need the Space Station to look at how we are going to get the answers to those questions: I have mentioned how much more capable I think the crew is with three people than with two. How about if we could go more than that -- what if we can go to four, five, or six? We do spend a lot of time right now maintaining and building our laboratory. This is a pretty unique laboratory. In most places I would assume that if you went, let’s say, to the [Texas] Medical Center here [in Houston] and that they were working on a new laboratory. My guess is people don’t go in and start doing research in that laboratory until it’s complete. Well, we’re doing research, and we’re still building our laboratory. So those of us that are up there can’t devote our time 100 percent to answering the questions, because we have to spend some time to taking out the trash, some time to changing the oil in the car. But if we can go to a larger crew, then we should always have a significant number of people who we can devote to the research. And I think we’ll get answers to the questions we need much more quickly. But, we’ve got to do two things: We’ve got to finish the Space Station, and then we have to operate it. Then we’ll be ready to give birth to interplanetary exploration.