CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- On a day mostly devoted to moving cargo from Atlantis to the International Space Station, as well as preparing for Saturday's planned spacewalk, members of the shuttle crew took time Friday to share their insights on the spaceflight experience.
"It's really cool to be working on your hobby while floating over a hurricane," rookie astronaut Piers Sellers -- one of the two spacewalkers for this mission -- told CBS News in an interview broadcast on NASA TV.
Sellers and veteran flyer Dave Wolf spent seven hours outside the orbiting complex on Thursday on the first of three spacewalks required to fully connect and set up the newly attached S-One truss to the rest of the station. Sellers was first out of the Quest airlock's hatch and it's a moment he will never forget.
"It was just dazzling. I was completely knocked out of my socks, which were luckily in my suit," said Sellers, who is known for his dry humor. "For the first five minutes I was pretty much non-functional. My little brain was overloaded."
Wolf was asked about the trouble with the station's robot arm that prompted the spacewalker's to perform one task without its help, and sent their heart rates soaring as the effort to set up a package of television cameras and lights was completed by free floating around the area.
"I'll tell you what, it was pretty tough," Wolf said. "That was our backup technique in case such a contingency were to occur and it sure enough happened. The arm's in real good shape for tomorrow and we're planning to use it."Prompted by a reporter's question, Wolf also talked about the need to increase the number of crewmembers permanently living and working aboard the ISS -- a number that is now stuck at three because of NASA's financial woes and the absence of a spacecraft lifeboat that can carry more than three people.
"It's important that we get up to seven people eventually and get the full capability out of this laboratory," said Wolf, who spent 119 days aboard the Russian space station Mir in 1997-98.
"We have some home runs to hit up in space, and the future of our Earth...are depending on some of the home runs we are going to hit. We have a real vision for the future, and it will take a full up functioning laboratory," Wolf said, noting that while he was talking Atlantis pilot Pam Melroy was working on a science experiment just a feet away.
"We're getting what we can out of it. We're operating at maybe a third power, in that regard, but we have a lot more to do to reach the vision."
The combined shuttle and station crews had little to do to start their Friday in space as they were given most of the morning off.
But the pace picked up during the afternoon as another round of cargo transfer operations began. Altogether there are several hundred pounds of science experiments, equipment, supplies and water bags to be moved from Atlantis to the station and a lot of it was done today.
The astronauts say that unpacking the shuttle and moving the cargo through the airlock and docking tunnel and into the station can be interesting at times. The real challenge is to make sure that everything that is delivered is properly stored, and the astronaut managing that is mission specialist Sandy Magnus.
"Sandy Magnus is our transfer queen. She is very detail oriented and very organized. And so, she's going to be the General on transfer days," Melroy said in a pre-flight interview. "Sandy says, 'Take this, and take it over to the station, and this is where I want you to put it, and this is what I want you to do with it, and then come back and tell me when you're done.'"
Meanwhile, the three Russian cosmonauts now at the station -- Valery Korzun, Sergei Treschev and Fyodor Yurchikhin -- also participated in a news media conference with reporters gathered at Mission Control near Moscow.
Much of the conversation involved Russia's census, the first ever following the break up of the Soviet Union. Forms for the station-based cosmonauts to fill out were carried into orbit by the most recent Progress freighter to dock there and will be returned to Earth by shuttle Atlantis.
This has been big news in Russia and Korzun added to the coverage by holding up his forms saying it was their "civic duty" to fill out such forms in support of the government's desire to make sure that resources are divided appropriately within the nation.
"You can be assured that filling out the questionnaire did not affect our activities. We have free time. We will always find time to execute our civilian duty. It doesn't take that much time," Korzun said.
The cosmonauts also were asked about space tourism and Russia's role in sending people up to the station on Soyuz taxi flights, including reported plans by a Russian television network to stage a "reality series" contest in which the winner would make a spaceflight.
"As an official, I support the policy of the Russian Space Agency" and the cosmonaut training center, Korzun said.
This prompted a reporter to ask Korzun's personal opinion and whether he would prefer to see a man or a woman fly to space.
"Once I had made a joke about it at the beginning of our flight and Cindy Crawford after that agreed to fly to the station," Korzun said with a smile. "As not an official person I would not comment. I will comment when I retire next year."
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