NASA pair has no interest in record

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's new space endurance champs, a pair of astronauts who have broken the six-month barrier, have no interest in going after the world record of more than one year.

"I'm ready to come home," spaceman Daniel Bursch, the father of four, said Wednesday.

Bursch and Carl Walz broke the U.S. space endurance record of 188 days on Tuesday night as they slept. The old record had been set by Shannon Lucid in 1996 aboard Russia's Mir station. By the time Endeavour returns to Earth on Monday, Bursch, Walz and Onufrienko will have logged 194 days in orbit.

Mission Control asked the men if they wanted to go for the world record. The answer: an emphatic no. Valery Polyakov, a Russian cosmonaut set the 438-day record aboard Mir in 1994 and 1995.

"Without a shadow of a doubt in my opinion, the biggest challenge would be mental and psychological," Bursch said.