CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. The workdays are long and hectic. Communication with the ground is spotty. And the International Space Stations (ISS) first full-time tenants already have a few gems of advice to their replacement crew.
"We just have told them to expect that things wont be perfect. A lot of it is going to be grin-and-bear-it," station commander Bill Shepherd told SPACE.coms Andy Chaikin during a space-to-ground interview Wednesday. "But thats what were here for."
Eighty-five days after their launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Shepherd and his two Russian colleagues Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev took a six-minute time-out for a wide-ranging chat with Chaikin, editor of SPACE Illustrated magazine.
The trio touched on life aboard the new outpost, the coming demise of Russias Mir space station and the possibility that Dennis Tito and other space tourists might fly to the ISS.
The latter is A-OK with Shepherd, 51, a former Navy SEAL and veteran shuttle astronaut who thinks regular citizens soon will be launching into orbit.
"Im basically all for it," Shepherd said.
But he also was quick to add an important caveat: "People just have to realize that getting here and getting home is still a fairly risky business, and I think that we should not forget that perspective."
The chat with Chaikin came just eight hours after the launch of a Russian Progress space freighter that ultimately will propel the venerable Mir station on a destructive plunge back through the atmosphere and into the Pacific Ocean.
And while space-to-ground communications made the conversation a bit clipped at times, it was clear that Krikalev and Gidzenko both Mir veterans regard the scheduled March 6 destruction of Mir as cheerless but inevitable.
"Its a real pity," said Gidzenko.
"Mir was home for me," added Krikalev. "But everything sooner or later needs to be replaced."
Living and working on the new station is a "very similar experience" to his two lengthy tours of duty aboard Mir, Krikalev said, particularly because the crew quarters and other parts of the international outpost are near-identical to those on the aging Russian complex.
"This is a very familiar experience," he said.
Shepherd, a station rookie, likens life aboard the outpost to a long cruise on a Navy submarine and added that his biggest surprise so far has been how well he has adapted to a long-term stay in space.
"What is surprising is how normal that it does feel. You dont have really much sense that you are in space physically, except for the fact that everything is floating around," Shepherd said.
"Were chowing down pretty well. The foods good. The waters good, air is good. Were getting plenty of exercise, and my feeling is we could probably keep doing this for a while. That was what was surprising to me."
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Now facing another two months in orbit, Shepherd and company still are busy getting the station shipshape for future outpost crews. The pace is a bit frenzied, with the so-called Expedition 1 crew trying to squeeze 30 hours of work into a 16-hour day. But the long hours were not totally unexpected.
"Thats the role that were in as the first crew. Were going to have to accept that," Shepherd said. "The good news is that for the guys and gals that follow us, it will be better."
A major improvement will come with the delivery next month of the U.S. Destiny lab, which will enable NASA to activate more capable space-to-ground communications systems that already have been ferried to the outpost.
Those improvements should solve the type of miscommunications that Shepherd termed "the biggest problem that we have had."
"Our pipe to ground has been kind of narrow, and not that reliable, and that really impedes both sides the crew onboard and the teams on the ground talking as we need to [in order] to sort things out," Shepherd said. "That would be my biggest comment to the managers right now. We have got to have more communications, and they have to be better."
Originally scheduled to return to Earth Feb. 26, the Expedition 1 crew likely will remain in space until March 20 or so as a result of shuttle launch delays.
A fresh crew comprised of Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev and two U.S. astronauts Susan Helms and James Voss are expected to launch to the station aboard shuttle Discovery earlier that month.
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