Space Station Chief Ready to Get Down to Earth

The U.S. commander of the International Space Station said Thursday the trip has been fun so far, but he will be happy to hand off “a good ship” when a replacement crew arrives.

During an orbital news conference, Bill Shepherd, the Expedition One commander and a Navy captain, compared his time in space to a tour at sea.

“The first month you’re kind of overjoyed, and about the fourth or fifth month you’re kind of ready to come home. I think we’ll be happy to turn a good ship over to the next crew,” he said.

Shepherd and his crew mates, Russians Yuro Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalyov, have lived aboard the under-construction station since Nov. 2. The Expedition Two crew is set to arrive aboard the space shuttle Discovery the second week of March. Shepherd and his crew will catch a ride home on the return leg of the Discovery voyage.

The space shuttle Atlantis is now docked to the station, and its crew of five joined the station crew for the Thursday news conference. Shepherd, the first American to command a space station since the three Skylab missions of the 1970s, took most of the questions.

He said that earlier in the week he felt depressed after long, fruitless hours trying to repair an air revitalization system.

“Then I had a couple of cups of coffee and thought about it and got up the next day and life was normal again,” he said.

Two space shuttle crews have visited the International Space Station during the Expedition One mission, but Shepherd said the visiting astronauts work on such a tight schedule that socializing has been kept to a minimum.

The Atlantis crew brought with it a $1.4-billion laboratory module named Destiny and installed it on the station, adding more than 40% to the habitable area in which the station crew can live and work.

Atlantis was scheduled to depart the station today and land Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.