International Space Station

December 10, 2000

NASA Astronaut Dan Bursch, a member of the Expedition 4 crew, chats about his upcoming mission on the International Space Station.

Page 1 of 6

Discovery.com: Welcome everyone to this exciting chat with NASA astronaut Dan Bursch! Captain Bursch is currently scheduled to live on the International Space Station for four months in 2001. He is a veteran of three space flights and has logged over 746 hours in space. Here's your chance to ask a real astronaut what it's like to live in space, how it feels to float in microgravity, what his fears are and why his next mission is so special.

Dan Bursch: I would just like to say welcome to everyone tonight. Thank you for spending your Sunday evening with me. The kids are asleep right now, so it should be fairly quiet and I should be able to answer everyone's questions. I appreciate you interest and can't wait to fly again in space. So, without further ado, send me your questions!

Cody: I am 10 years old, and I would like to know what the food is like. I would also like for you to trade me just one day in the space station and you can go to my school.

Dan Bursch: Well, thanks, Cody. Food is very important for us up in space, as it is here on Earth. In fact, one of the things that I will be starting tomorrow and doing through this next week is food tasting. We are selecting our menu for the four- to six-month flight that I will have in space. What is different about my next mission on the space station is that we will have a mixture of American and Russian food, so that will certainly make it different. Also, I will have to last a lot longer without having some of my favorite meals, which includes pizza and an occasional hamburger. The food, in general, is very good. Some of it is dehydrated. We take the water out of it and then we put the water back in in orbit. It saves weight bringing it into space. It is very good. We have a wide variety. There are just some things we can't have up there. One is a cheese soufflé. It probably wouldn't fall in space like it does on Earth. We just don't have a way to cook it in space. But overall the food is very good. I would love to trade places with you and go to your school. One of my most favorite things to do is visit schools and tell folks like yourself in person what it's like to fly in space. But unfortunately, actually trading places might be a little hard. But perhaps I can come to the school some day and, perhaps in 15 years or so, you can go to space.

J P Electron: What is the most valuable tool you have in space that you wish you had at home?

Dan Bursch: Actually when I first heard the first part of the question, I was going to answer, scissors, a spoon and a fork, just because that is what we need to eat with (related to the first question). As far as to use at home, if I could bring weightlessness back to Earth, that would be a tool - if you can call it that - that I would love to use on Earth, but the problem is that sometimes gravity actually helps us here on Earth by keeping things in one place. I tend to have a lot of piles here at home that my wife always reminds me about. And if I didn't have gravity to keep them in one spot, I wouldn't have piles anymore and they would be all over the place. I can't think of any tool that I have in orbit that I really can't get here on Earth. Many of the tools that we use inside the space station are tools that you can find here on Earth. Outside is a bit different. The tools have to be designed differently to take the range of temperatures, from -100 to +250 Fahrenheit. But they have a simple task - to tighten a bolt or cut a wire, similar to tools that we can get here on Earth.

Page 1 of 6