and jason carroll is out watching in new york. jason, why don t we start with you. what have you been able to see, feel, hear? give us an understanding of the landscape. reporter: what do i hear now? i think it s the staples singers singing i ll take you there. i think that s what they are playing now. and the shuttle took a lot of astronauts to a lot of different places. but the enterprise never made it to space. but still exciting nonetheless. exciting for the hundreds of invited guests who are here at jfk. we ll have speakers from nasa, speakers from the air and space museum, and also leonard nimoy will be here speaking as well. we spoke to him a few minutes ago. he talked about how exciting it was for him. he was around in 1976 when enterprise made its debut. the whole crew of enterprise came out for that moment. as you know, the aircraft is named after the spaceship enterprise after tv fans say you should name it enterprise. a lot of excitement here as we r
than the fact that he does have to go down south tonight for a commencement in miami at a college in miami. so, you know, at this point, it appears that you know, nasa has always said, look, we are not launching unless the vehicle is safe and ready. that s been the mantra. certainly, since challenger, certainly since the columbia accident. so, it doesn t matter who is here. the vehicle is not going if there are issues that nasa is dealing with. i think we re going to get astronaut mike fole is going to step in here, a veteran astronaut, suzanne, and we can grab him. we re putting a microphone on him as we speak, so we might be able to ask him a couple questions as well. let me move these things for mike to sit down. suzanne? sure. john reporter: if you have any questions for him. yes, i would certainly like to ask why it is that, you know, we re just talking, we re looking at the countdown clock,
and once they get in there and do that, then they ll be able to determine exactly how long of a delay. i had heard from some folks that it s probably no earlier than a 48-hour delay, unless somehow or other they find that it s something very simple. but it is not, from what i understand, an easy fix. so, the astronauts will go back and they ll just go back to the operations and checkout building, and they will wait to see how long a delay this is. if it stretches out beyond a few days, then obviously, they would go ahead and return back to houston until the shuttle is ready to fly. but again, they re not going to be able to do anything until they actually drain that tank, and that takes several hours to do that, before they can actually get in there, the trouble-shooters, to see what exactly the problem is with these two heaters on apu-1. and again, there s three apus, but one of them, there are malfunctioning heaters, and that has forced the scrub of today s endeavour launch. and
say, suzanne, it s pretty unusual that they come out here and turn around and go back. that was pretty strange. well that was only odd because the decision to scrub the launch occurred about the same time as the crew were going out to the launchpad. normally, that crew bus, we go past the launch control center here and then going out to the pad. we let out the chief of the office, peggy whitson in this case, and you probably heard right there the launch of the scrub, suddenly decided to pull into the lcc. john, i d like to ask michael, you ve been in a situation, you ve been flying many times here. what is that like? you know, you re about to you re 2 hours, 2 1/2 hours away from getting into the shuttle, taking off. i mean, you must have a lot of mental preparation that goes into this and then you re just told just like that, it s scrubbed? what do you feel? what do you think? reporter: suzanne is asking, you know, 2 1/2 hours before, you re headed out to the pad. you ve been
the spaceship i flew on twice, my first flight was on atlantis and i felt sad, slightly tearing thinking it is the last time that i ll see it in that condition. but the fact is, i believe more than anything else that more people should experience space flight than just the government astronauts, and i think the movement ahead and the incentives to commercial space to try and provide the services that to date the government has is the right way to go for america because more people, more children, more of my colleagues will have the idea that their dreams will focus around the idea of going into space in their careers. one thing that s always been frustrating for me as an astronaut is i ve always wanted to be able to share what i have seen in space, and the trouble is, you want to take someone with you, and the more we can do that in the future, the better it will be. all right. michael foale, thank you for your perspective, and john, you as well. i also want to let you know that ou