We´re standing here on pad 39 Bravo, and in the background you can see pad 39 Alpha, 39 A or 39 B. As you can hear in the background, there´s still lots of work going on, even though we don´t have any shuttles on the pads today. We have literally hundreds of people that are constantly working on the program out here, both on the pads and the vehicles that are getting ready for the next flight. And all these people get us ready for the day of launch. So, when the crew comes out, you see us walk out to the vehicle that day.

We have all the people that are in the firing room and the control room, back about three miles from here. And behind them are literally thousands of other people that are getting all the orbiters ready for us to go out for the day of launch, which goes, everything from the folks working on all the parts that we´re taking up to the International Space Station, through all the people that are working in all the systems level controls that support the orbiter while it´s here on the pad, right up to the point that we launch. And once we launch from the pad here, the mission control, which you´re familiar with in seeing on television takes control at the Johnson Space Center.

But right up until that, literally months in advance, all the people here at Kennedy Space Center are getting our vehicle ready and all of our payloads ready to go fly in space on that day. So, when we come out the day of flight, when it´s time for us to board the vehicle, not only do we have the people here to help us get into our suits, but we have all the people that are monitoring the systems onboard the shuttle, that have been the ones that have put our payloads together and get it ready for flight, and they´ve gotten us ready for flight. And all these people are professionals. We trust them with our very lives for the day that we go to space. And we really appreciate all their hard work. Every time we go to space, we like to say thanks to all of them. We never get a chance to say thanks to all of them, every single one of them, but we would like to. Every once in a while we get a chance to see people we´ve never had a chance to see before and we just say thanks at that point.