"I was looking at business problems and reducing them to mathematical formulas that could be dealt with by a computer. That's what we do all the time now, that's what the world is, but this was back in 1958. I was into a lot of exotic math, but the basic idea was to look at the real world and convert it to digital."
From there, Musgrave went on to graduate school at UCLA where he studied operations research as well as system engineering, programming and computer hardware. This would lead to his next career transition.
"I got interested in the brain. So I decided to go do the brain. It was a leap off into some other world, which is what I've done my entire life, and it works," he said.
Musgrave added a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Marietta College and, in 1964, received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Columbia University.
"I studied neurophysiology and neurosurgery," he said. "Then the space program came along and interrupted my career in medicine.
"I could have looked at different windows of opportunity, but the National Academy of Science and NASA started talking about flying people with formal educations, people with a doctorate, into space," Musgrave said. "When I saw that on the bulletin board of the medical school I said to myself, 'My goodness, that's me.'
" You look at everything I had ever done – my flying, my fixing stuff – and I knew that everything I had ever done was leading to this moment."
In August 1967, two years before Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon, Musgrave received word that he would be joining the astronaut ranks.
"When I was selected, I was excited. It was a job, but it wasn't just a job. It was a calling," he recalled. "At the same time it was just another playing field. That's all you can ask for in life, a big playing field with huge opportunities and challenges. That's what you want. You want to be challenged. You want something you have to live up to."
Following his initial astronaut training, Musgrave was put to work by NASA developing various aspects of the Apollo missions, including spacewalk procedures and lunar excursion modules procedures.
"I did some of the testing on Apollo, but not a whole bunch because I was only in initial training and we got there fast," he explained.
"In the early days of the space program we did it right and we did it fast. It was project management. Here's the project. The goal is the moon. What are the requirements? What does the moon impose upon you to get there?"
Musgrave would also assist in the design and development of NASA's Skylab program and served as backup pilot for the first Skylab mission. Musgrave was instrumental in the design of the spacesuits, life support systems, airlocks and manned maneuvering units that would be used for spacewalks and other extravehicular activity on NASA's space shuttle missions.
For Musgrave, designing something like the spacesuit was just another new playing field.
"What are the rules of the game? What do I have to know? How do I get to the goal? I'm always looking at getting the job done. That's what I do in life. That's what I teach. Get the job done. It's an outcome. It's a result. It's a goal. It's a game. So what are the rules of the game and how do I get proficient and how do I get good at this new business and go and do it?"
Musgrave credits much of his project management expertise to working with, and learning from, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket.
"I saw the project management he did in the 1960s leading up to Apollo and the Saturn V and I learned along the way. I learned about vision, leadership and all those business principles."
Musgrave would make his first trip into outer space as part of the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. As part of the mission, Musgrave performed the first spacewalk off of the shuttle using the spacesuit that he had designed. Despite his familiarity with the equipment, it was still an experience that he could only prepare for in his imagination.
"There are no simulators for spacewalk. We use a water tank, but it's a bad simulator," he said. "When you go upside down in the water you are still carrying all your weight. You are carrying 170 pounds on your collarbone and the blood rushes to your head."
"Only in your imagination does a spacewalk really exist. But it feels spectacular to look at the earth 300 miles below, and it feels spectacular to work and float in that free-fall condition."
Working in space is quite a different experience than working on land. Without gravity, tools and equipment can simply float away, never to be seen again. As such, Musgrave explained that every movement he took had to be carefully practiced and rehearsed.
"In a great spacewalk you think about yourself as a ballerina at the opening night of the ballet. You think about the perfect moves, the moves you have to make to get the job done. It's the moves and the choreography of the tools and instruments and the whole process you have to go through. You hope your imagination got it right. If not you'll stumble a little bit."
Musgrave also put his choreography and imagination to the test during his fifth trip to space, on the Shuttle Endeavour, during three spacewalks to repair the Hubble Space Telescope – a repair that was necessitated by a flawed mirror during the telescope's construction.
"Things with the Hubble were going incredibly badly. Congress told us we're going to look at how you do and if you don't do well we can't continue to approve plans for a space station," Musgrave recalled. "The space station requires 80 spacewalks. You can't abandon it half way through. Congress needed the confidence to know we knew what we were doing."
Despite the extra weight riding on his shoulders to repair the telescope, Musgrave insists that the pressure was not a factor in performing his task.
"Did I feel the pressure? No. I was on the playing field, and I was playing the game. But each move that was made had to be made to perfection. I used to train with Dorothy Hamill, the Olympic figure skater on how to do spacewalks."
Dorothy Hamill? Yes, you read that correctly.
"Dorothy knew what she was good at, and she was good at routines. She played with her routines for the Olympics. She played and played and played until she converged on a solution. That's when she knew what she had to do, and would repetitively practice until she had it down and could pull it off without being rattled by the pressure, not even at the Olympics.
"Spacewalking is an athletic event. I don't care what's in your head. Only your body does the job. With figure skating, your body is where the grace and execution come from. That's what will win the prize. So no matter what the pressure is, the focus has to be on perfection of the movement. Same with Dorothy. It's how your body moves. Pressure does not get the job done. The heat is there, but you learn to like the heat, if you perceive it at all."
Musgrave flew his last mission with NASA in 1996 and left the space program a year later to pursue private interests – which, to say the least, have been varied and numerous. He spends much of his time working in his "sandbox" of Orlando, Fla., where he currently operates a palm tree farm and a real estate development company.
"I like palm trees. I've always liked palm trees. I'm a farm kid. I can grow stuff," he explained. "I've grown almost 15,000 palm trees. You look out the window and here they are. I've grown all of them from seed. But I'm good at that."
With his real estate development company, Musgrave works to transform parcels of unimproved land into lots that are ready for home construction.
"My basic model is somewhat like a fairway of a golf course. Open space in the middle but on the periphery you have these gorgeous trees," he said. "Every parcel is different. I work with what's there to start with. I'm a landscape architect. I've been doing this since age five. I know heavy equipment, I know how to maintain equipment and I maintain my own equipment. I'm a tree surgeon. I climb trees with a chain saw and I do what I do. That's the world I was raised in."
Other entrepreneurial ventures include a production company in Australia that produces books, DVDs and television programming, and a sculpture company in Burbank, Calif. Musgrave also spends a week per month in California working for Applied Minds, Inc. where he helps "to invent the future for other bigger companies."
Never letting the grass grow beneath his feet, Musgrave does independent consulting work for a variety of companies and performs multimedia presentations on topics such as vision, leadership, motivation, safety, quality, innovation, creativity, design, simplicity, beauty and ecology.
"They think they'll get me to just go and give a talk, but it never ends with a talk. They like the stuff I give them and they want more, so then I enter a relationship. I give them more. I coax them."
Musgrave's clients come from a wide array of industries, and even include the U.S. Coast Guard. One particular area that Musgrave focuses on is project management, a topic he gained a unique perspective on from his time at NASA.
"I teach the project management of the 1960s of going to the moon today to companies in London and New York. That's aerospace, sure, but great project management is great project management and I don't care if you are a bank, making cars or whatever else you are doing."
As far as Musgrave is concerned, the lessons are applicable regardless of the audience.
"It's about looking at where you want to go. It's about getting good specifications on the requirements that the project will impose upon you and then it's off to the design process. Designing something, that when put together, will do what you ask it to do," he said.
"There are great books on project management, and I know what's in the books. But I have first hand experience with great project management and horrible project management. I know how to take the great project management of the 60s and the horrible project management that NASA had in the 90s and the new century and I know how not to do it."
Simply put, there is no typical day in the life of Story Musgrave. Between his various projects and ventures, each day presents a new set of projects and challenges. This 76-year-old would have it no other way.
"There are many different days. Can't say there is a typical day. I'll work in my sandbox from the time the sun comes up. Then I'll come in at some time and work my businesses. Then I'll work for the different clients I have."
And the fact that some might consider him to be a bit of a wanderer has not been lost on Musgrave. It's a notion that he embraces.
"I am a wanderer. I am a traveler. I am an explorer. I'm always looking for something that lights up my passions. But it's important to understand that I bring 100 percent of my past with me. I never ignore anything I ever learned in the past. I take it with me and apply that to what I do today.
"People say, 'How do you do so much?' I only do one thing. I learn the new game. I put myself into a new playing field by doing it the same way every time. I'm like Windows or Apple – I only have one operating system. I do the same thing every time," he said. "I fixed farm equipment, I fixed airplanes, I fixed people, and that's why they put me in space to fix Hubble. Because I was used to fixing things, and that's a true path."
But regardless of his many life experiences, or wherever life may yet take him, Musgrave still brings it all back to his days on the farm in Massachusetts.
"Who I was as a kid, that's my hero. The kid brought me to a place in life where I could pursue opportunities presented to me. The kid got me there. That's my hero, and that's the important part of my career. The kid got me to a place in life where I could take advantage of opportunities that came my way. In life a door opens, you jump in and go or you don't. For me, when a door opens, I'm in." |
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