The following is selected text from an interview with Dr Shannon Lucid recorded just a few weeks before her mission on STS-76 to spend five months orbiting the earth with a Russian Crew in Space Station Mir. The interviewer is a NASA - Johnson Space Centre official who wanted to know what life is like for an astronaut!

Interviewer:

When you found out that you were selected to work and live on the Mir space station and when your name was included for training in this project, what was the motivating factor for you? What did you feel you could contribute to expanding the body of knowledge about life in space and working in space leading up to the International Space Station?

Shannon:

I was really excited when the Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations, Hoot Gibson, called me up and said I was going to leave next week and start learning Russian. Earlier, he had asked what jobs everyone in the office would like to do, so I put down that my first choice would be to be involved in the Phase One program and go be a crew member on Mir. Frankly, I was very surprised that something volunteered for and wanted to do actually happened because that’s generally not the way historically that it has worked. So I was just really excited about that.

Interviewer:

Shannon, this will be your fifth flight into space. It’s a mark shared by only several other people in history. What have been the most important issues you have focused on in your training and preparation for this long expedition? And how does the thought of five months in orbit strike you?

Shannon:

I think what I’ve focused most on this last year is just trying to be able to talk in Russian. That seems to be what has taken all of our time. I don’t think anybody has a concept of how difficult that is. And we’ve focused on technical Russian so we could get through the training program and it’s very obvious that the five months we spend on Mir, you’re not going to sit around and talk about ways of producing oxygen. And so we’ve also tried to work on conversational Russian so we can talk about just ordinary things with our crew while we’re up there. So it’s been a real challenge to try to do both of those things. As far as spending five months on Mir, I’m looking forward to it. It’ll be really different. I don’t know exactly what to expect and, well, you can talk to me when I get back.

Interviewer:

Shannon, with the addition of two additional shuttle/Mir docking missions through to the Spring of 1998, your arrival aboard the Mir will start more than two years of continuous U.S. presence in space, on a rotating basis. How important do you think that all is in terms of understanding better how to live in space - the research that you and your colleagues who will follow you aboard Mir will conduct in the name of preparing for a space station?

Shannon:

I think it will be very important. I think the most important thing will be learning how to cooperate and work together with the Russians. Hopefully, both sides will be learning how to do this and will learn that both sides have something to offer and learn how to compromise and work together. And hopefully that will be one of the most important things that will come out of this endeavour. Also I think that it’s a very good opportunity for America, because we have not had the opportunity to have long space flights.

Interviewer:

Let’s talk about the experiments and the type of work you’ll be conducting aboard the Mir. Soon after you arrive, the final module ever to be launched to the Mir in its lifetime, the Priroda module, will be sent aloft to link up to the Mir. Tell us a little bit, about what a typical week for you is likely to look like, in terms of the overall science objectives that you’ll be trying to accomplish over 5 months.

Shannon:

During a typical week you’re working for five days and then you have the weekend for catching up for what didn’t get done and doing repairs if there’s something that’s broken. And a typical day in the week will be that you get up and you do the things that you normally have to do in the morning like wash your face and comb your hair. Then you eat breakfast and then you have about three hours that you work and you do your science experiments and things like that. You also have an exercise period in the morning. Then you have lunch and then in the afternoon it’s a repeat of the morning. You have three hours where you work and you have another exercise period in the afternoon. Then in the evening you have supper, then you read the radiogram that describes what’s going to be on the schedule for the next day and you plan for that and then you have maybe 30 minutes of free time in the evening. So that’s basically what you’ll be doing for five days of the week. Then on Saturday and Sunday the workload is a little less.

Interviewer:

What about for personal relaxation? Tapes, movies, books, what kind of stuff do you plan to take aloft with you to occupy your free time aboard the Mir?

Shannon:

There was a certain weight allotment and so I basically sent up quite a few books on STS-74 so they should already be on board Mir. And so that’s basically what I would be planning on doing if I have free time.

Interviewer:

You’ve flown in space four times, conducting so much diverse research on those missions, launching spacecraft to Jupiter and conducting life sciences research. You’re about to go and live on a space station and you’re about to be another pioneer on a road that will lead to many others living on an International Space Station for many years to come. What will space station activity and the ability to spend long periods of time in space do for us down here?

Shannon:

There are many, many ways that you can answer that question, so I’ll answer it from a very personal standpoint:
What I hope that we learn from space station is how the human body reacts to long duration spaceflights, because I would like to see us be able to make interplanetary flights. I’d like to see us plan to fly to Mars and that’s what I hope space station would do for us. Now, that’s not necessarily what other people would say space station is for, but from a personal standpoint that’s what I would like to see happen.

Interviewer:

And what about the food? What type of accommodations are made for personal preference of food choices?

Shannon:

We had the opportunity to taste-test a wide variety of the Russian food, and the menu was built around personal preferences. Part of the food will be the Russian food and part of it will be the NASA food, so we have both menus. We’ll be eating part Russian food and part NASA food.

Interviewer:

Why did you decide to become an astronaut?

Shannon:

When I was a little girl I was very interested in being a pioneer like in the American West and I really liked those stories and I thought, "Well, I was born in the wrong time." And then I thought, "Well, I can just be an explorer," but then I thought, "When I grow up all the Earth is going to be explored."

And then I started reading about Robert Goddard and the rockets that he had done and so I read a little bit about that. And then I started reading about science fiction. This was all when I was in fourth and fifth grade and I thought, "Well, that’s what I can do when I grow up. I can grow up and explore space." And of course when I talked to people about this they thought that would be rather crazy, because that was long before America even had a space program. So I just think it’s pretty remarkable that things turned out the way they did.

Interviewer:

Final question, Shannon. You launch on Atlantis, coast to the Mir for a couple of days and then the third day of the flight you dock with the Mir. What do you think is going to be going through your mind as you float up on the flight deck of Atlantis and look out the windows and see this huge complex growing ever closer as you approach it and say to yourself, "That’s my home for the next 5 months"? What do you think is going to be going through your mind?

Shannon:

Well, most probably that. That’s my home and I’ll be wondering what Yuri and Yuri are thinking and if they’re looking out and watching us come and those types of thoughts.