Story was the only astronaut to fly on all five space shuttles: Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour and Columbia.

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Sheena Fields
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Dr. Story Musgrave is an American physician and a retired NASA astronaut. He has seven graduate degrees in math, computers, chemistry, medicine, physiology, literature, and psychology.

1 Dr. Story Musgrave is an American physician and a retired NASA astronaut. He has seven graduate degrees in math, computers, chemistry, medicine, physiology, literature, and psychology. Story was a part-time trauma surgeon during his 30-year astronaut career. He flew on six space flights, performing the first shuttle space walk on Challenger's first flight, was a pilot on an astronomy mission, conducted two classified Department of Defense missions, was the lead space walker on the Hubble telescope repair, and on his last flight, he operated an electronic chip manufacturing satellite on Columbia. Story was the only astronaut to fly on all five space shuttles: Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour and Columbia. I've invited Story to join us today to discuss his amazing career and his inspiration for achieving excellence. Welcome to the program, Story. Okay, Chuck. Glad to be here. It's a pleasure to have you. Story, you have accomplished so much. In some of your recent talks, you attribute your success to basically three things, curiosity, doing it right the first time, and opening doors. SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break

2 Yeah. Can you tell me more about that? Talk about curiosity first. Why do you think that's essential? Well, curiosity leads you to different forks in the road. I was in big computers, the IBM 709 dual processor in UCLA back then. Okay. I've got to understand how the brain works. So, that's curiosity. I can't leave it alone. Hey, leave it alone, Story, (but it s) on the ground floor of a great field. Leave that other thing alone. I can't. I'm fascinated by knowing a little bit about machine language, and if you want to call it machine intelligence, but how's the brain works. So, I get led to that. Well that's called curiosity. When I'm traveling from the west coast to the east coast, I need to get my pre-med. Well doggone it, I crossed the Ohio River near Marietta, 230 years old, and golly you've got a gorgeous college here to Ohio. Look at this place. So, it's curiosity, what's here. I did my pre-med there. It's curiosity. It's gonna lead you to different places. People think curiosity killed the cat. Well, it does. But on the other hand, if you don't, you're gonna die in place. If you don't follow your curiosity, a lot of times, curiosity's gonna show you the details of what it takes to get places, and then reason and intellect and technology is not gonna show you all the factors you've got to get control of if you want to get to the finish line. So, curiosity and my TED talk on curiosity, I put forward a new hypothesis, and that is imagination. Curiosity and imagination go hand-in-hand. So, your curiosity, and yes you're going to a new place. And so you're just following your heart, you're following your dreams, and curiosity is leading you into some new place. But you don't go there. You're not looking at a vacuum. It's not a dark vacuum where your curiosity is leading you to. Now you don't know what is there, Chuck, but you do build an imaginative video tape as to what you expect there, and you may be wrong. It doesn't matter. But you're going to a new world and you do have in your imagination, it builds what you expect, even if you don't know. So, curiosity and imagination, I don't think there's any such thing as curiosity without the imagination, which is going to create some idea of what's going to happen to you and what you're going to find. So, that's curiosity. Do it right the first time, was a whole bunch of times I haven't gotten it right. Yeah, me too. But curiosity leads you to a new plan. I look upon life as opportunities like playing fields. You get trapped on a playing field, a new one, what you gonna do? How do you get to the finish line? It's not necessarily right, you know right or wrong. A lot of times it's qualitative. It's mostly right and a little wrong, or you totally failed. Okay, fine. As you go through life, one opportunity after SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 2 of 11

3 another, you're in a new world and you just try to get to the finish line. Life's a bunch of playing fields. What are the objectives? What are you trying to do? Yes. So, you're trying to bring that to the finish line, the objectives. And the opening door I've already thought of, addressed that. It's to keep moving. So, what you're gonna do tomorrow. You look in a mirror, see who you are today and where you want to go tomorrow. What are you gonna do... What's the next mountain you're gonna climb? That's all. So, a lot of times doors won't open. But here you sit and say, "Well okay. Where do we go tomorrow?" A lot of times the doors won't open, but you just pick one of them that will open. And I think that's important, another lesson, is different than this question is, and that's stubbornness and determination. Don't work that too hard. People look at me and say, "You're massively determined." Well, I put a lot of energy into what I do, but stubbornness and determination, you have to be careful with them. You jump into some opportunity, you get new employment or new geography, new something or other, and man, it's not going well. So, you run into human resistance. That's human resistance. After a while, you say, "Adios. Goodbye." Walk away. And so, if you are so determined at winning that one, you will win it. Ten years later you'll win it and you will have turned down a dozen other great opportunities that did not resist you. True. That is so true. If you're not getting somewhere, if you see it's hard... Now I'm not talking about the difficulty of you getting up to speed and you learning what you've got to do, your own proficiency and training and all. So yes, but even then, you may run into, "Well this isn't for me. I'm not that good at that." You also, there's two things there. You have to play to your strengths, play to the experience you've got, play to what you're good at, and don't be too stubborn and determined when you run into resistance because at that same time, you're hitting resistance on this playing field, there's another 10 that are open. One thing that really impressed me was about the opening doors. For some of our listeners, they just don't know how you've done that. Can you give an example of when you went to a place and you were determined, "I'm gonna work here," and you got there? How did you do that? Well sometimes I said I'll work for nothing. You can work almost anywhere when you tell them, "I'll work for nothing." That's true. There's no risk. And then they find out your value and they put you on salary fast. So there's different ways to get there, but I got into college because I never finished high SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 3 of 11

4 school. I got into college by just going to the dean and saying, "I'm a product of child labor. That's why I didn't finish school. And I'm a Marine just back from Korea, and I'm here ready to go to work." The dean didn't hesitate one second. He said, "Of course." I could have gotten into any university anywhere. That same thing. You just show up at the door. Product of child labor, so I never finished school. I'm back from the Marines, ready to finish work. You can't turn that kid down. There's no way. No, you can't. So there are different scenarios you build to make stuff happen. The dean's looking for some excitement, too. He's got all these 4.0s. After a while, 4.0s become a little boring, you know. Right. I could see that. It's one story after another, but when this thing walks in the door, they say, "My God. I like some excitement. I'll take some risk on this one." And that's kind of fun. Well, that's incredible. Let me ask you this. I am just a huge space buff, and I know a lot of my listeners are, too. Going on to space, can you describe how felt about just the beauty in space? Well, I am a student of beauty. I'm a student and I teach. I teach beauty at Art Center College for Design. I teach what is compelling, what is evocative. And so yeah, there's all kinds of beauty. The (space shuttle) window, of course, I can't get enough window time. The window time is outrageous. Just the geography is spectacular. It's not a geography book. It's the world's own geography. And you know, it's what you see. You can't get enough of that. It's the eddy currents, the spiral currents, the right kind of sunlight, you can see ocean currents. It's the aurora, it's the pink and the green shooting up and down. These waves that cover 1000 miles. It's the sprites that maybe I was the first human being to record. Not to record, but to report. They said, "We know you're a good observer, Story, but we don't know what you're talking about when enough airline pilots had seen the same vertical lightning and they call them sprites." And so, it's all that kind of stuff. It's out the window. You can see galaxies with the naked eye. You can see the meteoroids coming in. You can see three or four or five at a time, and there's the shooting stars, except they're between you and Earth. Incredible. You thank every one of them for leaving you alone on the way in. They could have nailed you on the way in. SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 4 of 11

5 Absolutely. But the whole, I could go on forever, and in the window. It's the heavens and it's the Earth that you're looking at. The beauty of zero G to freedom, the three dimensional freedom. It's a special case because you and I evolved to be there. Life evolved over four billion years here, and gravity played a major part in its evolution, and a major part in your particular makeup. And you get there, the body doesn't know how to deal with that. It wasn't designed to deal with that. The other part to the beauty is how seamlessly you can pull off the mission. Is that beauty? Yes, that's a beauty, too. Believe me, it's a dance. And so, a space walk, I'm an athlete. This is something I brought to the space walking world, is that I am an athlete. What? Yes. I go out the door and the dance of my suited body and my tools, that is an athletic event no different than figuring skating. Trained with Dorothy Hamill, people like that. They're real champions. I am an athletic event. And whether I get the job done or not depends upon my athleticism and my movement with tools. It's that simple. So there is a beauty of that ballet, that dance. A space suit isn't nice, but it has its own kind of beauty, and how seamlessly you work the relationship between you and mission control, it has a beauty in it, too. The way that you work that relationship. The way you maintain that relationship, and the way you talk, and the way you almost... The way the two of you know what page you're on without even talking about it. That has a beauty to it. Story, you helped design the space suit, too. Is that correct? Yeah. I got to space walking immediately as soon as I joined NASA. I was even working Apollo, testing Apollo capsules in a vacuum. I got more vacuum time than any human in history, due to all my tests. And I shouldn't brag about that. A vacuum's not necessarily a nice place to be. No. Definitely not. I got into that because space walkers' got to do work. That's the only reason you're out there, is to do work. Well, I know how to do work. I'm a product of child labor. I drove everything on the farm. I was a heavy construction equipment mechanic. I was an airplane mechanic with the Marines. I was a tank mechanic with the Marines. Trauma surgeon, fixing broken people. I knew how to do work. Secondly, my physician stuff, I know the anthropometrics of the suit. I know the ergonomics of the body and the suit. You got your body a suit and I've got your body. A suit has not got your body. It has its own body. So, being a physician with anatomy to physiology, and all the rest of that stuff, working the human factors and working the ergonomics, my physician trainer education helped there, too. SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 5 of 11

6 As a physiologist, which I have graduate degrees in physiology biophysics. When you put the helmet on you re a closed loop, when you put the helmet on, you breathe what the system is giving you. You're not breathing air. And your temperature is what the box, that box you've got on the back of you, that's what the box is doing for you. So, you're a closed loop. So your physiology is whatever the life support system on your back is giving you. And so that was another neat way I got into space walking. And then of course you have procedures, my military, flying, and all that where you have best practices and continuous improvement to procedures and all. And that helps you to get into that world to come up with and design and create the best possible dance. And fourth, and principally, is my upper body strength. As a farm kid, as a wrestler in college and all the rest of that. Well let me ask you this. This is a little off topic here, but for me, when I think of space, and I've been an amateur astronomer for most of my life, and I just love the beauty of it. I love just the quantity I see, stars upon stars. You describe Hubble takes a small field of view, and we have trillions of stars in that point of view on that. Yeah, it's 10 to the 29th. That's what they say now. It's 10 to the 29th stars. That's a lot of zeroes. Yes, yes. I can't even count to 29 folks. How am I supposed to- Oh, I doubt that. I think you can count way beyond that. How am I supposed to get a feel for 10 to the 29th? It is hard to picture that. In all that, too, to me it's life. There's so much space out there. What are your feelings on life elsewhere? Well it's there in the billions of forms because I mean, okay we're going back to 10 to the 29th stars. And most stars we look at have bunches of planets. And a whole bunch of stars we look at have planets conducive to biological life as we know it. And doggone it, life will arrive. If you look at the power, the power of life, the power of that carbon to carbon bond, the power of what life is. On our own little planet here, we've already got four million species and the scientists, they know we're not done yet, but there's gonna be twice as many. Right. So we've identified four million species. Well, they think there's another three million out there, too. That's the power of life. The power of life's to arise and to propagate itself and to continue on. And so, if any planet out there is just a little bit conducive to life, life is going to arise or be carried from somewhere else. Statistically then, it's a total certainty that life is everywhere out there by the SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 6 of 11

7 billions and billions, by the trillions. And if it gets back together on its own little planet, the technology will have evolved over millions and billions of years, and so they're doing interstellar travel. Can I ask you this question? Was it difficult getting used to zero G for the first time or subsequent times? Not for me. Not for me because I think three dimensionally. I want good stuff to happen. 70% of astronauts going into space get sick, 70. That's 7-0. Right. And 50% are sick to the level of vomiting. So, when going into space, 50% of astronauts are vomiting on day one. That is not a nice number. No. The symptoms are similar to a bad carnival ride, but that's not the cause. The cause is because you evolved in a one G field and now you don't have one. And the body is unable to add up all the sensory information. It's unable to add that up. Wow. I came up with a simulator to condition people ahead of time. I came up with that 40 years ago, and they still haven't done it. Oh really? Yes. That sounds like that would really help because 70% is just so much. Yeah. They need to do something about it. But you know it is so severe at times that our people are launched with intravenous. They launch with a syringe underneath their orange escape suit, and they can squeeze on the syringe without taking the suit off. They're giving themselves intravenous tranquilizer. I did not realize that. Well, no there's a lot you don't realize. That's why you're talking to me That is why we're talking to you. Definitely the expert. What do you think of the future of man's space travel? I don't know. We need a long-term vision. Where are we going? We're not going anywhere. There is no plan to go anywhere, so we're not going anywhere. There SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 7 of 11

8 is no plan. What is the plan? Tell me the plan. Don't tell me Mars, sir. In the 2017, 2018 congressional budget, there's not a single dollar for Mars. There is no plan to go to Mars. No one's going to Mars because there is no plan and there is no money. There's no vision. There's no leadership and there's no project management. I'm sorry, sir. I come from the '60's when they knew what we were doing. Right. It's called Mercury Gemini Apollo in eight years. And we didn't know the technology. We were just getting into the space business, and doggone it we did it in eight years, and we did it incredibly well. Yes, absolutely. Now it would take two decades. It takes decades to do anything. I agree with that. They talk about space launch system is a deep space vehicle. It's only half the size of Apollo. Apollo was deeper space than space launch system. So was the Apollo space craft. Don't call Orion deep space. Is it low worth orbit or is it deep space? If you're occupying it, it's got a 21 day lifetime. Where you going in 21 days? Not very far. It's shelf like is six months. That ain't far either. And of course, you just have to question, Orion's got no person on Mars. You are not gonna carry 30,000 pounds to Mars if it has no purpose there. Come on, guys. You know what I mean? Just use common sense. But where are we going? We're going nowhere. We are not going anywhere. And if you, Chuck Fields, want to tell me we are, then you tell me the project management, you tell me the plan, you tell me how much money and has it been allocated. Huh, Chuck? I wish I could. I really wish I could. Well, tell me. You tell me where we're going. Well, I can imagine, because it's kind of frustrating to me, too. You joined NASA in, I think, Yeah. During the height of the Apollo program. That wasn't the height. SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 8 of 11

9 That was the year of the fire. Oh, that's true. Apollo I, yes. But it was amazing to just see how Apollo was going and the Saturn V was a truly remarkable rocket. I guess I would, looking back, I would have thought we'd be so much farther now than we are. Well sure. I think right after Apollo, instead of pulling back into Earth's orbit, we could have gone further. Von Braun would have taken us there. Right. He had vision. He did. But we let him go. Speaking of vision, what do you think of SpaceX? Yeah, great. They're doing something. A week ago Wednesday, the game changed. It did change. It changed, but I hate the use of multiple kerosene rockets, just like we did in the past. Saturn V was twice as powerful and it never failed. So, we did have that 50 years ago. So, space launch system, we're gonna put Orion on it. When it first live test, second flight we're gonna loop it around the moon, take some pictures on the way back. That's called Apollo VIII, 51 years ago. Exactly. Oh my gosh. So, what are we doing? Where are we going? They're gonna call it deep space, because the loop around the moon will be slightly further than our Apollo mission, so then they were saying deep or further out. Well, okay. Okay, a little further out. Story, they need you in charge. But anyway, I'm not a cynic, as you know. I've never been a cynic. I didn't get where I got by being a cynic. I just want a grand vision. I need a grand vision, a long-term vision that includes all aspects and all players in the game. I want to see a leadership to make that happen, and I want to see the project management that'll bring those missions into fulfillment. And I don't care what you want to do in life, I don't care what, you must do that. Vision, leadership, project management, and resources. SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 9 of 11

10 What keeps you busy these days? What am I doing? Well, I'm a landscape designer contractor, heavy equipment operator. I've raised 9000 palm trees. I've created 16 parcels of land to put a house on. That's kind of my sunshine, fresh air, get some exercise. I work for a company called Applied Minds. I'm in southern California one week out of every month, so I work for Applied Minds as an artist, designer, engineer. I'm a professor at the same time at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, so I teach design. I teach engineering. I just, last week, my topic was aircraft design. But I teach what beauty is. I teach a differentiation of the product and the person. So, I teach project management and personal development, those kinds of things. I have a great set of clients. I'm a problem solver. If you get right down to it, I'm a problem solver. Oh, yes. That's pretty much what I do in life. I have a great set of clients that continue to get me long-term clients and ask me to come and solve problems for them. So, that's a very meaningful challenge. So I do that about 80 times a year. So, once a week or twice a week, I'm off with some client doing something. Little Story, your daughter, she seems incredible. Little Story. Now she and I are going on Virgin Galactic. That is amazing! It may have the oldest and the youngest in space on the same flight. That would be awesome. And what a father-daughter memory. My goodness. Yes. Most just take them to a dance or something, not to space. Story, you are such an inspiration. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining me today. Okay, Chuck. Thanks for your interest and your faith that I have something to offer, and this opportunity to converse with your public. Story offers several of his books, as well as his DVDs and CDs on his website, including his book, Story, The Way of Water, which I highly recommend. He also shares his incredible photography from a T-38, as well as Australia from space. To learn more, visit his website at StoryMusgrave.com. SpaceTech Corporation Online Coffee Break Page 10 of 11

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MITOCW ocw f99-lec18_300k MITOCW ocw-18.06-f99-lec18_300k OK, this lecture is like the beginning of the second half of this is to prove. this course because up to now we paid a lot of attention to rectangular matrices. Now, concentrating