EXPEDITION-4

Prior to launch Bursch was asked how he viewed his flight with the Expedition-4 crew. He replied, in part,

“I think early on, well, maybe after about a year of all the travelling and training, Carl and I were talking about it with Yuri and I think we all came to the realization that this mission is different. And Yuri has been very helpful and because of his experience already on Mir and the six months that he spent on Space Station, of letting us know that it is different… the best analogy that I think I can come up with, it’s kind of like the difference between a sprint and a long­distance race… With a long-duration mission I think it’s going to be more like a marathon, where we’re going to have to pace ourselves… we can’t run at the same pace that we’re used to running on the Space Shuttle, and there’ll have to be times where we’ll have to help each other out just to say, hey, it’s time for you to just take a break and sit by the window, look out, and take some time; have some time to yourself…

However, there’ll be times when a Shuttle comes to visit and we’ll have six to eight very, very busy days of getting ready for them to come, while they’re docked, helping with the EVAs, helping with installation of new equipment, and so, it’ll vary from being very slow to very fast, almost a Shuttle-like pace, and then slowing down again. And what’ll be different, also, is that the weekends, I haven’t quite figured out how that’s going to work; I know that on Saturday it will be a lighter duty, and Sunday in most respects we’ll have much of the day off, but I can’t imagine having the day off and not having anything to do … Maybe… I’ll end up saying, OK, give me things that need to be done, because… I’ve run out of personal time or, I don’t want to read a book right now, I want to do something.’’

In the same interview Bursch explained how the Expedition-4 crew viewed their

personal responsibilities,

“[J]ust as in Shuttle flights… everybody has their own position and their own responsibilities… so early on we… divided up the responsibilities of the crew. Yuri, for a Commander it’s different, in that he’s responsible for everything… he’s tended to specialize more on the Russian segment and some of the Russian systems, especially because he had the experience on Mir and a lot of the systems… are similar to Mir. Carl, with his experience on EVAs… became the… natural lead for any type of EVA activities that we would do, especially on the U. S. segment or using the U. S. spacesuit, or the EMU. Yuri’s kind of, is more of an expert on the Russian Orlan, the Russian spacesuit… I took on working with the Space Station Remote Manipulator System… And that has been my prime responsibility and my prime system. There’s also systems on the station that we divide up… keep in mind, with only a crew of three, everybody has to know a little bit about everything… however each one of us has tried to specialize in a certain part of the system to take care of that… So we kind of had a big list of all the tasks and… of all the equipment, and all the things that we need to do on space station, and we just basically divided them up.’’