>> NASA astronaut Scott Kelly at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Scott, we're back at the launch site,
and now just six months away
from 12 months away from the planet.
Is the reality, the magnitude of the mission starting
to strike home, starting to really sink in?
>> Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, being here in Baikonur.
It's for the first step to get into space,
and my training has not been all that busy since I started
about a year and a half, two years ago.
It's been pretty nice pace, but I think now is
when it really starts to pick up with the final exams we had
as a backup crew and then coming here and then going back
to Houston, yeah, I anticipate, you know,
having a lot more events scheduled
and then a lot more travel leading up to coming back
to Russia then back here February and March.
>> So from this point on,
what is the most difficult part of the training?
Is it the training itself, or tending to personal issues
to get your family support, your loved ones in a position
where you know you're not going to see them for a year?
>> You know, the training is not much different
than what I did last time.
There's certainly more payload training because I'll be
on the Space Station longer.
The Soyuz training's a little bit different in that we do it
with [inaudible] for asset
and then [inaudible] will be coming home with a year later.
But I think mostly it'll be more of a challenge
in that I am getting ready to be gone for about, it'll really
about 14 months, which is pretty long time for me, you know,
leaving from home and leaving the 19 year old
at home in my house.
So that's going to be a little bit more challenging this time.
>> Do you look at this as a marathon, Scott, and if so,
how do you and Mikael [inaudible] control the pacing
of such a long mission?
>> You know, I've talked to some guys that have been
on the Space Station recently, and they recognize
that this will be a challenge when I asked them, hey,
could you stay another nine months, could you,
how would you feel about staying another six months depending
on where they are in the flight,
and they definitely recognize the challenge of it.
But I think going into it, you know, with the mindset right
from the beginning that I'm going to be there
for a whole year is going to make it, you know,
it might make it easier than, certainly,
if you were on the Space Station, had been there
for six months, and then you were told you have
to stay another six for some reason.
That would certainly be a lot harder.
So I think it is, in some ways, a mental thing.
You know, preparing yourself for, you know, the long haul.
And as far as controlling the pace, we've discussed that.
I think I'm going to have to a little bit different pace
or perspective on the whole thing this time
than I did last time.
You know, they say the long duration flight is
like a marathon, and the shuttle flight's like a sprint.
What I say, especially from my last flight, is, like,
was that the last flight actually kind of felt
like a long shuttle flight except you had a little bit more
time on the weekend.
So it was like a long sprint.
>> And, finally, Scott, the, this is the first time you
and [inaudible] spent a year in space in almost two decades.
What do you think is ultimately going to be the significance
that will take away from this mission?
>> Well, some day we're going to go to Mars,
and we have the facilities on board the Space Station
to really study the effects of space
on longer duration space flights.
I mean, six months is a long time, but, you know,
going to Mars is going to take a lot longer than that.
So, you know, having the capability
that the International Space Station provides
to study the human element of this is going to be, you know,
I think significantly better than what we've,
in our previous experience at the, you know, the Russians
and the Soviets experienced on the Mir Space Station just
because of how technology has progressed and their hardware is
as improved over this period of time. ------------------------------e6dda1a8390e--