Despite complaints by space station skipper William Shepherd early Friday about the crew's heavy workload, a senior NASA flight director says the schedule will improve within a week or so as equipment gets stored and critical life support systems are activated.

Struggling to find needed equipment among the tons of supplies delivered by recent shuttle crews, station commander William Shepherd complained he and his crewmates - Yuri Gidzenko and Sergei Krikalev - were unable to keep up.

"Be advised the tempo of the planning is pretty ambitious," he said. "We worked really hard yesterday and we could not keep up with the timeline and we're way behind today, too. So you'll just have to be patient with us, we'll get it when we can."

"We understand. You can just let us know when you'd like to do that," replied Stephanie Wilson in space station control.

"I copy. Any influence you could have with the Russian side to kind of slow down the planning a little bit (would be appreciated)," Shepherd said. "Hooking up the food warmer was scheduled for 30 minutes and it took us a day and a half to finally figure out how to turn it on."

Lead flight director Jeff Hanley said today Shepherd's frustration was natural and that conditions will improve next week.

"Obviously, moving into a new place, the crew's faced with something analogous to getting a new house and all the boxes from the movers are sitting around, nothing's been unpacked," he said.

"So it's obviously a very busy time for the crew to unpack, put the items they're regularly going to use where they can find them and to generally get the lay of the land in terms of their living space. That is a lot of what we were facing yesterday and today.

"We've always expected there would be a lot of overhead in these first couple of days finding things," Hanley said.

The crew is scheduled for just five hours of work per day during their initial days aboard the station.

"There are a lot of small tasks to do, a lot of things to remember in these first few days getting everything set up," Hanley said. "But I think you'll see us fall into a pretty good routine by early to mid week next week."

Krikalev worked early today to troubleshoot problems with two of the Zvezda command module's eight batteries. Each battery is equipped with a charge-discharge device and a computer controller. The hope was that Krikalev could mix and match components to get one of the two faulty battery systems working.

The troubleshooting paid off, because Krikalev found a cable in one battery system with a bent pin that could explain the problem. Russian engineers were expected to have a recommendation on what to do at some point Saturday.

The astronauts also set up a low-resolution computer videoconferencing system that uses NASA's constellation of TDRS communications satellites to provide more frequent two-way chats between the station and mission control centers in Houston and Moscow.

"The crew also installed the central post computer in the service module," Hanley said. "It's a device that provides an electronic interface between a laptop computer and the rest of the Russian segment computers.

"This is so the crew can see telemetry from the on-board systems of the service module (Zvezda) and the FGB (Zarya) and so they can send commands from that laptop to control spacecraft systems."

The cosmonauts also assembled a carbon dioxide removal system. Additional assembly and checkout will be performed Saturday.

"Presently, they're still using the absorber cartridges, which have lithium hydroxide in them," Hanley said. "They're inserted in the air circulation loop to remove the carbon dioxide. We have to replace those every day so we want to get the Vozdukh up and running in the next few days to save the limited supply of cartridges we have on hand."

Hanley said the only real problem experienced by the crew so far was spotty communications.

"The Russian ground sites have been our primary method of communicating with the crew," he said. "These ground site passes last anywhere from 10 to 15 to a maximum of 20 minutes at the best part of the day and there's a large gap of the day where the station doesn't pass over Russian ground sites.

"We've tried to augment that with NASA ground sites when the station's flying over the U.S. But getting the OCA videoconference capability up and running today is going to really help in the crew and ground coordination."

On Saturday, the Alpha astronauts will continue work with the Vozdukh system and set up a laptop computer to oversee station commanding. Installation of an air conditioner compressor was moved up to Saturday to help control humidity.

"We're trying to give them a little bit of a break and then they'll have Sunday off to catch up and get used to their new home," Hanley said.

Next week, the station fliers will continue assembling the station's main Elektron oxygen generator, install components of a manual docking system, test the station's treadmill and activate its inventory management computer, which should make it easier to find needed equipment.

Locating cables and other supplies has been an ongoing problem for the crew as seen in the following exchange:

"Alpha, this is Houston. How do you read?" asked communicator Rex Walheim.

"Alpha has you loud and clear, Houston," Shepherd said. "How us?"

"We've got you loud and clear, Shep. How are you doing this morning?"

"Rex, good to hear your voice."

"And it's great to talk to you from down here," Walheim said.

"Hey, just a quick overview. We've had a fair amount of trouble finding one of the cables that connects the 28-volt Russian power to the U.S. food warmer. And we also need it for the battery charger for the Makita and the volt meter. And so, that's the situation."

"First of all, we have a location for a cable you can use for the food warmer if you're ready to copy."

"Rex, Alpha, say again, you guys were broken."

"Yes, I have a location for the cable you need for the U.S. food warmer if you're ready to copy," Walheim repeated.

"Go ahead."

"OK, it's behind FGB panel 303 and I'll give you the cable number: It's sierra-echo-zulu-three-nine-one-three -four-one-seven-three-dash-three-oh-one."

"OK, I think that's the one we need, we'll go look," Shepherd replied. "Thanks a lot for the help. Hey, I just want to give an 'attaboy' to all the shuttle crews, all the people who have worked the stowage in the FGB. There's a lot of stuff in there, but it's in a pretty ship shape fashion and I think they did a great job (making) the best of a bad situation trying to keep it all squared away. it's about as orderly as it could be in there."

"Those are good words, Shep, we appreciate that and we'll pass those on," Walheim replied. "We'll hand you over to Moscow. And it's great talking to you from down here, Shep."

"A big hello from the crew to everybody in Houston."

"And you've got a lot of happy people here ready to begin this big adventure with you."

"It's already started," Shepherd said.