As crew members, including NASA's Kevin Ford, prepared for the launch from Kazakstan on Tuesday that would take them to the International Space Station, the trio did some astronaut bonding, horsing around with their spacesuits.
Ford also sounded an optimistic note about the future of a space station whose cost of about $100 billion over the last dozen years has been criticized.
The NASA astronaut -- who will launch Tuesday about 4:51 a.m. Pacific time with Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy and Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin -- said at a news conference Monday that the best was yet to come for the space station. The next 10 years are key, he said.
