Space shuttle Endeavour blasted its crew of seven into clear tropical skies under a spectacular moon Friday evening. It is the final orbiter flight of 2008 to the international space station. Its mission: extreme interior redecoration, with a little outdoor lighting work thrown in for good measure.

The shuttle rumbled off its launch pad right on time, a little before 8 p.m., turning night into day for a few minutes as the craft’s main engines and rocket boosters lit up Cape Canaveral.

Endeavour’s crew, commanded by Navy Capt. Christopher J. Ferguson, will spend Thanksgiving circling Earth, and one of them — Sandra Magnus — will stick around the space station for Christmas and New Year’s.

The crew also includes pilot Eric A. Boe, an Air Force colonel; mission specialists, Heidemarie M. Stefanyshyn-Piper; a Navy captain, Robert S. Kimbrough; an Army lieutenant colonel, Stephen G. Bowen; a former Navy submarine captain, and Donald R. Pettit, a scientist. Magnus also is a scientist.
Once the decision was made to take off, Kennedy Space Center launch director Mike Leinbach told the crew: “The vehicle’s in good shape, the weather’s beautiful. On behalf of the entire shuttle launch team, good luck, Godspeed, and have a happy Thanksgiving on orbit.”

Ferguson replied: “It’s our turn to take home improvement to a new level after 10 years of international space station construction. Endeavour’s ready to go.”

The 15-day mission has been dubbed “Extreme Home Improvements” — and extreme they are. Once they reach the station on Sunday, the astronauts will install more bedrooms, a second bathroom, an exercise suite and a new kitchenette — all in zero gravity. They’ll also do some spacewalking to fix a cranky joint that turns the station’s vast solar panels to face the sun.

For nearly a decade since the international space station program began, the focus has been hauling people, supplies and giant high-tech tin cans — prefabricated space housing if you will — to build the complex like an enormous orbital Erector set.

This time, all the construction is on the inside.

“In this case, when the crew leaves the station won’t look any different on the outside but it will be dramatically different on the inside,” said Mike Suffredini, NASA’s space station program manager.

The aim of the makeover is to expand the station to make room for more crew. Next year, the station is supposed to go from three full-time crew to six. More crew means more science, making better use of the $100 billion laboratory in the sky.

The station is now 76 percent complete — almost the size of a football field — and is as spacious inside as a three-bedroom house.

“It’s such a large vehicle (now) that just the maintenance of such a vehicle with only three crew gets to be very difficult,” Suffredini said.

The masterpiece of the interior improvements is without doubt the new $19 million toilet system complete with a privacy enclosure. Until now the crew have had to make use of only one toilet located in the Russian segment of the station, and that one from time to time has not worked well.

What makes the toilet even more special is that it will be hooked up to the $250 million “Regenerative ECLSS system” — basically a complex closet-sized dehumidifier-cum-water treatment plant capable of recycling sweat and urine into clean drinking water and fresh oxygen.