CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- U.S. astronaut Frank Culbertson knows all about crises in space.
In 1997, the shuttle pilot-turned-program manager shepherded NASA through a potentially fatal fire and an equally harrowing cargo ship crash at Russia's space station Mir -- near-disasters that took place with American astronauts on board.
And with the shipwrecked Mir tumbling from one emergency to the next, then-deskbound Culbertson guided the agency through an intense controversy over the wisdom of sending other U.S. astronauts to what many considered an orbital deathtrap.
Yet despite those close calls, and despite his intimate grasp of the dangers that lurk in low Earth orbit, the married father of five will hang up his business suit this week and head toward a four-month voyage aboard the International Space Station.
The frontier, it seems, is beckoning once again.
"I'm happy to be back," said Culbertson, who put his astronaut career on hold in the mid-1990s to help manage seven U.S. research tours aboard Mir -- precursor missions to the ongoing bid to build the new international outpost.
"Flying is what I really love, and being in space is what I really love," he added. "It is, in my mind, the greatest adventure that I can have as an explorer, as a professional, as an aviator."
Strapped into shuttle Discovery's crew cabin, Culbertson and two Russian cosmonauts -- Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin -- are scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 5:38 p.m. EDT (2138 GMT) Thursday.Four shuttle astronauts will serve as space taxi drivers, ferrying the so-called Expedition Three crew up to the international station before returning to Earth Aug. 21 with the outpost's current tenants: Yuri Usachev, Susan Helms and James Voss.
The whirlwind shuttle flight will be but a prelude to a 119-day mission that Culbertson and his crew plan to carry out aboard the orbiting outpost.
And unlike his two previous shuttle flights -- the last of which came eight years ago -- the station tour will give Culbertson the chance, at long last, to see what it's like to live an work in space for an extended period of time.
"My intense feeling at the end of both my (shuttle) flights was, `I need to get back into space as quickly as possible,' because it felt so good to be there, and it was such a short time: my first flight was only five days, and the second was 10 days," he said.
"People tell me you have to be there at least 30 days before you really acclimate to it and feel comfortable there. And so I'm looking forward to really learning how to live and work and move in space. I think that'll be a great experience."
For Culbertson, 52, the road to orbit began in rural South Carolina. Born May 15, 1949, he grew up in Holly Hill, a small town of about 1,000, where his mother was a teacher and his father, a former World War II Navy pilot, was a family doctor.
The former Soviet Union launched the world's first satellite -- Sputnik -- when Culbertson was eight, and from a very young age he knew exactly what he wanted to do in life.
"I wanted to be a Navy pilot, a test pilot, and an astronaut, and most people laughed," he said. "But you know, sometimes you get good help along the way, and some good guidance and some lucky breaks, and you end up in the place you wanted to be in."
Early on, the good guidance came from Dr. and Mrs. Frank L. Culbertson, Sr., college graduates from families that had had none, a mother and father who understood the value of hard work both in and outside school.
"They believed very strongly in education, and that you learn for yourself what you need to do to be successful in life. And they helped me learn how to do that -- to lead a good life, and to be good to people around you, and to be a team player, basically."
Next page: Path to the stars
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