Mission to Mir

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We're 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow

on the plains of Kazakhstan.

A Soyuz rocket, the 300-ton workhorse

of the Russian space program...

rolls out to the launchpad.

This is the cosmodrome at Baikonur...

a sight few western eyes have seen.

Under the old Soviet Union...

it was so secret,

it wasn't even on the maps.

Today you'll find outsiders here

for every launch.

As often as not,

a foreigner is a member of the crew.

The launch pad has a long history.

This reliable technology

has launched over 1,000 rockets.

Most were never seen by the public.

Now the days of secrecy

and suspicion are gone.

Nations of the world

are banding together...

to build the first permanent

International Space Station.

Phase One.' A series of joint missions

and crew exchanges is now under way.

Destination.'

The Russian space station MIR.

"Mir" is the Russian word for "peace."

There's a lot of hardware in orbit...

but this space station

with the hopeful name...

is the most complex of all.

It's been home

to scores of men and women...

for more than a decade.

They come and go in a Soyuz spacecraft,

docked there on the right.

In two's and three's they've lived

in that central module...

some for more than a year at a time.

At first, that was the whole of MIR.

The rest has been added over the years.

Moored on the left is Progress,

an unmanned delivery truck...

that brings up supplies.

Then it takes away the garbage...

and burns up as it enters

Earth's atmosphere.

And now, there's another visitor

to Russia 's MIR, an American citizen.'

Astronaut and scientist Shannon Lucid.

She's a veteran of four shuttle flights...

and has already logged

over 800 hours in space.

She's the first American woman

to live on MIR...

and she's very much at home.

I think I'd been up on MIR

about three months...

when the first Progress came

and we opened it up.

Then Yuri would say, "You can just smell...

"all the fresh fruit and vegetables

that are here. "

So we dug around

and we got those bags out...

and for that lunch

we had fresh tomatoes and onions.

That was one of the best meals

I have ever eaten in my life.

It was just great.

Shannon grew up in Bethany, Oklahoma.

One of the cosmonauts was born

in Russia, the other in Ukraine.

One night,

Yuri and Yuri and I were sitting...

sort of floating around,

just talking about our childhood.

Here we were, three people,

we grew up in two different countries...

and we'd been working together,

having a real good time together.

And that was just amazing to us,

how the world had changed.

We got talking about

when I was growing up...

how afraid America was of Russia...

and then they were explaining to me

how afraid Russia was of America.

The Cold War was very, very dominant

in our lives.

We would do bomb drills at school,

and go underneath our desk.

An Iron Curtain has descended

across the continent.

I remember very distinctly

the night that Stalin died.

Russia was the enemy.

America had to be strong

to be against Russia.

I remember when Sputnik was launched,

standing outside the school door...

and just thinking about the artificial

satellite going around the Earth...

I thought, "Wow! That's what I can do.

"I can go and be a space explorer,

because certainly...

"space won't be all explored

by the time I grow up. "

Says Mr. K.,

the Soviets will overtake America...

and then wave bye-bye.

Then I remember

when the first seven were selected...

and at that time, I wrote a letter

to Time magazine and I asked them.'

"Why were just males selected?"

But the Russians were first

to launch a human to space.

The new superhero.'

Yuri Gagarin.

I thought it was absolutely remarkable

that a human being could go into space.

But then, it was the feeling of.'

"Why isn't America doing this, too?"

And this generation does not intend...

to founder in the backwash...

of the coming age of space.

We mean to be a part of it,

we mean to lead it!

I actually sold my bicycle

to buy a telescope kit.

And then a friend of mine and I

spent awhile out at night...

making a map of the moon,

just like real astronomers.

Tranquility Base here,

the Eagle has landed.

That's one small step for man,

one giant leap for mankind.

The space race was in the air.

More kids wanted to be astronauts

than president.

But the Cold War continued to escalate.

Never in human history had so much

death-dealing power been amassed.

But even the threat of annihilation...

couldn't smother

the human urge to explore.

In the U.S., Titan missile carriers

also launched the scientific probes...

Viking and Voyager,

to survey the planets.

Some of the Soviet rockets that

came off this weapons assembly line...

were earmarked

for space exploration, too.

Then in 1975...

the first joint U.S. -Soviet mission

in space, Apollo-Soyuz...

ignited hope for future cooperation.

As tensions cooled further,

new partnerships emerged...

and American companies began

successful joint ventures...

with the rocket builders at Krunichev.

Then, it seemed almost overnight,

the Cold War ended.

The Soviet Union was gone.

These workers woke up

in a brand new country.

The new Russia now had the MIR station.

The U.S. had the shuttle.

American and Russian leaders agreed.'

"Why not combine these great assets

and explore space together?"

Ambitious new joint missions have begun.

Astronauts are here in Russia,

training side by side with cosmonauts.

The first challenge to overcome.'

culture shock.

One of the reasons why I volunteered

for this program is that...

it would be a challenge to communicate

with somebody in a different language.

To find out a little bit

about life there in Russia.

These are the children of the new Russia.

They're also the children of cosmonauts.

Cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov

and his family live here in Star City.

This is the Russian space complex

in a forest on the outskirts of Moscow.

I really enjoyed my time in Star City.

It was sort of like

living on an air force base...

because it's a big complex

and it was very community oriented...

in a sense that most people walked

to wherever they were going.

They didn't drive cars.

Star City is also home...

to the only full-sized model

of the MIR station.

Now it attracts a steady stream

of American astronauts...

who are getting acquainted

with the station and how it operates.

Not only do they learn

every detail about MIR...

they do it in a different language.

In a typical day,

we started at 9.'00 in the morning...

and we would listen to everything

in Russian all day long.

There were weeks at a time

where the only English I heard...

was when we were walking

back and forth to class.

Charlie Precourt isn't Russian.

He's an American astronaut,

born in Massachusetts.

Now he's practicing in a Soyuz trainer.

I realized, when I started training

and met the Russians...

that if I couldn't go to the window

with a cosmonaut...

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