Last space crew ready for liftoff

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

America's longest space-flying streak ends this week with the smallest crew in decades -- three men and a woman who were in high school and college when the first space shuttle soared 30 years ago.

History will remember these final four as bookending an era that began with two pilots who boldly took a shuttle for a two-day spin in 1981 without even a test flight. That adventure blasted space wide open for women, minorities, scientists, schoolteachers, politicians, even a prince.

On Friday aboard Atlantis, this last crew is scheduled to make NASA's 135th and final shuttle flight. It will be years before the United States sends its own spacecraft up again.

Commander Christopher Ferguson, co-pilot Douglas Hurley, Rex Walheim and Sandra Magnus delight in their good luck.

"We're very honored to be in this position. There are many people who could be here," said Ferguson, a retired Navy captain. "When the dice fell, our names were facing up."

NASA managers were looking for space vets when they cobbled together this minimalist crew, with seven spaceflights among them, to deliver one last shuttle load of supplies to the International Space Station.

They are an eloquent, colorful bunch in their 40s, accepting if not embracing the spotlight.

Ferguson is a drummer for an astronaut rock and roll band.

Hurley is nuts about NASCAR; his cousin is married to crew chief Greg Zipadelli.

Walheim is a former shuttle flight controller; his graphic designer wife creates the mission patch every time he flies, always on Atlantis.

Magnus is arguably the first out-of-this-world chef: She whipped up Christmas cookies and Super Bowl salsa aboard the space station in late 2008 and early 2009, using -- as all good chefs -- ingredients on hand.

It will be NASA's first four-person shuttle crew since 1983.

Until private companies get piloted spacecraft flying -- an estimated three to 10 years out -- NASA will have to stick with the pricey Russian Soyuz to get U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

But this should not be a time of mourning, these astronauts say, or for second-guessing the shuttle retirement decision made seven years ago by President George W. Bush in the wake of the Columbia disaster.

Ferguson and his crew want this final flight to be a celebration. "There is not an American who doesn't look upon an ascending shuttle with a certain sense of American pride, hair on the back of your neck, chills, call it what you will," he said.

The astronauts say they will have to be pried from the cockpit.

Magnus expects to shed tears as she sits on the runway, "contemplating 30 years of a spectacular program."

"We're just trying to savor the moment," Ferguson said. "We want to be able to say, 'We remember when. We remember when there was a space shuttle.' "