Quote

Even with only two people on board, where maintenance is a large piece of our working day, we still have time to do scientific research. We have to be ready to support those Shuttle visits in a lot of different ways.

This is a really big space station. We do a lot of various kinds of work here, different kinds of science experiments; we have over 400 different experiments going on at any one time in different areas, from basic science research to medical technology, that hopefully will benefit more people on Earth.

There's a lot of work to do - not only the science but maintaining the facilities up here. When you go down from a crew of six to a crew of three, obviously you've lost half of your crew time available, so it does have an impact. But it's an impact we plan for.

I don't think we're wasting people in space.

Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy.

The space station is the most unique laboratory we've ever built. The reason we have it is to do research on materials, people, medical matters, pharmaceuticals - the possibilities are nearly endless.

We also had to bring with us some desired scientific equipment over to the station as well as assemble new machines. For that, I had to conduct two space walks.

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.

We're going to be focusing our science on things that will take us farther and longer into space. For many of those experiments, the crew members are human guinea pigs, which is fine; that's part of my job. I don't mind being a human guinea pig.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?