In the days and weeks since the terrorist attacks, NASA has beamed up hefty news reports to astronaut Frank Culbertson and his Russian crewmates aboard the international space station.
Flight controllers have arranged extra chats between Culbertson and his family and friends, and even piped up live college football action -- anything to boost his spirits and keep him informed.
As the only American "completely off the planet" during this crisis, Culbertson admits to feelings of isolation and, occasionally, frustration 400km up.
"We know that we will return to a world that is different than the one that we left, and we're trying to understand that from up here -- with some difficulty," Culbertson said late last week.
Astronaut Susan Helms, who moved out of space station Alpha in August as Culbertson was moving in, cannot imagine being in orbit during such trying times.
"For me, it would have been extremely difficult to be up there because information is what helps people get a sense of what's going on," she said.
Helms and space station crewmate Jim Voss said they received a single news sheet each day of their five-and-a-half-month mission. It held mostly headlines and news blurbs.
Mission Control also filled special requests -- Survivor updates for Helms, sports scores for Voss.
Culbertson and his crewmates, cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, made it clear long before the events of Sept. 11 that they wanted a heavy dose of world news.
The three spacemen learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon soon after they occurred. A flight surgeon in Mission Control privately relayed the news, sketchy as it was.
Culbertson, 52, a retired Navy captain and former fighter pilot, was flabbergasted.
"My first thought was that this wasn't a real conversation, that I was still listening to one of my Tom Clancy tapes," he wrote to family and friends in a letter dated Sept. 12 and released by NASA to the public one month later.
Culbertson's emotions rose as the space station soared over northeastern US around the time the second World Trade Center tower was collapsing. He could see the smoke billowing from lower Manhattan.
"Other than the emotional impact ? the most overwhelming feeling being where I am is one of isolation," he wrote that night.
Culbertson discovered the next day that he knew one of the victims.
The pilot of the American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon was Charles "Chic" Burlingame, a 1960s Naval Academy classmate.
"Tears don't flow the same in space ?" Culbertson wrote. "It's difficult to describe how it feels to be the only American completely off the planet at a time such as this.
"The feeling that I should be there with all of you, dealing with this, helping in some way, is overwhelming," he said
Culbertson must wait until mid-December to be reunited with his wife and five children, and his colleagues.
Space shuttle Endeavor will deliver a fresh space station crew and bring back Culbertson, Dezhurov and Tyurin.
The shuttle also will carry 10,000 small US flags that will be given to survivors of the Sept. 11 attacks and victims' families; a US flag from the World Trade Center and a Marine Corps flag from the Pentagon; a Pennsylvania state flag; badges representing the New York police officers who were killed; and patches or possibly pins representing the firefighters who died.
"The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the Earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche," Culbertson wrote in a letter on Sept. 12.
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