William Shepherd (born 1949) is an American astronaut, commander of the Expedition One crew on the International Space Station. (wikipedia)
We're doing very well, actually. Our pre-flight and in-flight experience -- getting good exercise has really helped.
The space station is a hood ornament , if you will, for how we need to get along in the post Cold War world,
He's really a hard worker. He works his tail off and hopefully he keeps doing that so that we have a better junior and senior on our hands.
Survival training is one of the biggest ways that we did that. I think four years of that before we flew made us really ready for life on station and we adapted well.
He's young, so he's on one night, off another night. But when he's on, he's really surprised us with what he's capable of doing.
I want them to take that hurt feeling with them. They did not complete something. I want them to think about it all spring and summer, because I'm here to win in March. I never want them to feel this again.
On behalf of the crew on Alpha, I'd like to commend Endeavour and its crew for the tremendous technical challenge and the great achievements ... I can't think of a mission that we've flown in a long time that's been a bigger challenge.
So I just want to wish everybody down there happy Thanksgiving from the crew of space station Alpha.
We were technically ready to come home, but we're still going through a lot of details.
I think the biggest issue for NASA and for the Russian Space Agency and other folks... (is) everybody has to accept some cultural change to make this happen. It's probably the biggest problem in front of us and it's probably one of the hardest things we have got to go work on.
