Interview With Crew of Space Shuttle Columbia
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Miles O'Brien, live at CNN Center in Atlanta. "MONEYLINE WEEKEND" will be back in just a few moments, but we're going to take just a few moments to say hello to the crew of the space shuttle Columbia, now traveling above the Pacific at 17,300 miles, 150 miles above us, waiving to us. Let's give you an idea of who's who. This is Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli ever to fly in space. Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist, on her second mission. Rick Husband, the commander, second mission. Laurel Clark, another space rookie, book-ended by space rookies here. Commander Husband, let's talk first of all about how everything's going. You got a menagerie of animals up there. Too many scientific experiments to enumerate here, but generally speaking, how's it going?</s>RICK HUSBAND, COMMANDER: Well, things are going really great, Miles. We're having a great time up here. We had a great ride to orbit, and all the activation of the experiments and the space apps (ph) went extremely well. And we've really got our space legs up and up running.</s>O'BRIEN: Send it over to Colonel Ramon, please. Colonel Ramon, I'm curious what it was like when you had that opportunity on one of those early passes to look down at your home country in the Middle East in general. What were your thoughts at that time?</s>ILAN RAMON, FIRST ISRAELI ASTRONAUT: To tell you the truth, it was pretty fast, it was actually today, and it went too fast. It was partly or mostly cloudy. So I couldn't see much of Israel, just the north of Israel, and, of course, I was excited.</s>O'BRIEN: What are your thoughts now that you're in space about what it represents to your nation?</s>RAMON: I think it's a great</s>O'BRIEN: Was the launch what you expected?</s>RAMON: The launch was really exciting, yes. A lot of noise, shaking, but after about a minute or so, and it went really smoothly.</s>O'BRIEN: Security was very tight. A lot of concern before you ever fired off those solid rocket boosters. Did you ever -- how aware of that were you, how much of an added concern was that for you?</s>RAMON: Well, since NASA security and the county (ph) security were unbelievable and helpful, I didn't have any doubt that everything would go really good, and so it did. And I was aware of it. I got there with my family, and I knew exactly what was going on there.</s>O'BRIEN: It's interesting, when you consider the risks astronauts take, to be concerned about that on top of everything else. Send it over to mission specialist Chawla. I'm just curious if you could share for us a moment of what it's like being in that space hub? It's a scientific juggling act, isn't it?</s>KALPANA CHAWLA, MISSION SPECIALIST: It really is.</s>O'BRIEN: And let's send it over to Laurel Clark. Laurel, are these experiments working? You have 80 some experiments. They couldn't all be working as planned.</s>LAUREL CLARK, MISSION SPECIALIST: Well, things are going very smoothly. As expected, there are some minor glitches, and the eight minutes that it took us to get to orbit, we trained months and months for, and didn't have to use any of that preparation, other than being aware and ready. As for our science experiments, on the other hand, it's very that fortunate we've had such thorough training, we've had an excellent team on the ground. With the minor glitches that have occurred, we've been able to take care of them. And the teams on the ground are getting tons of incredible data.</s>O'BRIEN: Let's close with Colonel Ramon. I have an e-mail question for you, colonel, this comes from Great Britain. "Don't you think it would have been a powerful evocation and image of humanity if you had flown with a Palestinian or an Arab crew member?" And he wishes good fortune to you. Have you thought much about that?</s>RAMON: Well, as you probably know, an Arab man already flew in the '80s, in the '80s. So I am not the first one from there. And I feel like I represent, first of all of course the state of Israel and the Jews, but I represent also all our neighbors, and I hope it will contribute to the whole world, and especially to our Middle East neighbors.</s>O'BRIEN: All right. We're going to have to leave it at that. The crew, or at least a portion, the awakened crew of the Columbia. There are some of them asleep right now. Three of them in bunks in the mid-deck. Thanks very much for taking a little bit of time while you are in orbit to visit us from the flight deck of the space shuttle Columbia. We wish you well as this space marathon, 24-7. Oh, my goodness. Look at that. A little chalice going by there. Anyway, thanks very much, and have a great mission. We appreciate it. It's always fund to watch that. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com