profile article - story musgrave

7/17/2019 Profile Article - Story Musgrave

1/4BGS INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SPRING 2012 WWW.BETAGAMMASIGMA.ORG

From the outside looking in, one might think StoryMusgrave has had quite the random life. But spend sometime with the man, and you will see that it all makes

perfect sense. He is just doing what he does.My basic mantra is geing the job done, Musgrave said.

Its looking at outcomes; looking at results. Its looking at thenish line and geing the job done. Thats my basic overall

theme.While his life and various career paths would eventuallytake him to some amazing places, he gives a great deal of thecredit to who he was as a child growing up on his parents farmnear Stockbridge, Mass., where he was geing the job donesince the age of ve.

Im a farm kid. Being a farm kid was instrumental in whatI ended up doing, Musgrave explained. People oen ask if Ialways wanted to be an astronaut. Not in the 1930s. I wanted to

be a farmer.I drove everything on the farm by the age of nine. By 12

or 13 I (was operating) heavy equipment. I could keep it goingwhen it wasnt working exactly the way it should. I became aprey good mechanic early on.

As the worlds rst truly international honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma members can be found all around the

globe. BGS members are the Best in Business, and represent a wide array of business backgrounds, disciplines

and experiences. There is no doubt about it, the Societys members are a diversely talented and extremely eclectic

and successful group. That said, only one member can truly lay claim to, quite literally, being out of this world.

As a NASA astronaut for over 30 years, Story Musgrave (BGS 1983, Syracuse University)

was sent into space on six shuttle ights, spending more than 53 days outside the earths

atmosphere. If that wasnt a strong enough bullet point on his resume, he also: Designed the spacesuit currently in use by American astronauts;

Conducted the rst shuttle spacewalk during the rst ight of the SpaceShuttle Challenger; and

Served as the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Space Telescope repairmission.

In addition to his time with the space program, Musgrave has accumulated seven

graduate degrees in a wide array of subjects including math, chemistry, medicine,

physiology, literature, psychology and business.

He has also served as an aircraft electrician and air mechanic

for the U.S. Marines, has own more than 18,000 hours in over 160 aircraft, and

is an accomplished parachutist with over 800 freefalls.

Thats more time spent in the air than me, and I have wings.

As if all that was not enough, Musgrave is a medical doctor who from 1967

to 1989, while working for NASA, served as a part-time surgeon at Denver

General Hospital. During the same period he worked as a part-time professor

of physiology and biophysics at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

Wow! Thats a lot of stuff. I feel like less of an owl in comparison. That said,

allow me to introduce you to Story Musgrave - a truly unique and talented, not to

mention charismatic and inspiring Beta Gamma Sigma lifetime member.

That mechanical ability is a key component of the personthat Musgrave would become. It was a skill set that he foundparticularly useful while serving as a military airplanemechanic.

When Korea came up I ran o and joined the Marines,Musgrave said. Eventually I was a crew chief and had myown three airplanes. They were my planes. I coordinated the

maintenance on them and I was the one that signed o to go y.I looked aer these planes and Im the one that certied theywere ready to go o to war. I did that at age 18 so I grew upvery fast.

Following his service with the Marines, Musgrave enrolledat Syracuse University where, in 1958, he received a Bachelor ofScience degree in mathematics and statistics. Upon graduation,he went to work for the Eastman Kodak Company as amathematician and operations analyst.

I was looking at business problems and reducing them tomathematical formulas that could be dealt with by a computer.Thats what we do all the time now, thats what the world is,

but this was back in 1958. I was into a lot of exotic math, butthe basic idea was to look at the real world and convert it to

digital.

Profiling the Best in Business

- Professor Elwell Professor Elwell is the ofcmascot of Beta Gamma Sigm

Centennial Celebratio

By: Seth Treptow, BGS Communications Director


2/4

What are the rules of the game? What

do I have to know? How do I get to thegoal? Im always looking at getting the jobdone. Tats what I do in life. Tats whatI teach. Get the job done. Its an outcome.

Its a result. Its a goal. Its a game.

BGS INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SPRING 2012 WWW.BETAGAMMASIGMA.

From there, Musgrave went on to graduate school atUCLA where he studied operations research as well as systemengineering, programming and computer hardware. This wouldlead to his next career transition.

I got interested in the brain. So I decided to go do thebrain. It was a leap o into some other world, which is what Ivedone my entire life, and it works, he said.

Musgrave added a bachelors degree in chemistry fromMariea College and, in 1964, received his Doctor of Medicinedegree from Columbia University

I studied neurophysiology and neurosurgery, he said.Then the space program came along and interrupted my careerin medicine.

I could have looked at dierent windows of opportunity,but the National Academy of Science and NASA started talkingabout ying people with formal educations, people with adoctorate, into space, Musgrave said. When I saw that onthe bulletin board of the medical school I said to myself, Mygoodness, thats me.

You look at everything I had ever done my ying, myxing stu and I knew that everything I had ever done wasleading to this moment.

In August 1967, two years before Neil Armstrong steppedfoot 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

wasnt just a job. It was a calling, he recalled. At the same timeit was just another playing eld. Thats all you can ask for inlife, a big playing eld with huge opportunities and challenges.Thats what you want. You want to be challenged. You wantsomething you have to live up to.

Following his initial astronaut training, Musgrave was putto work by NASA developing various aspects of the Apollomissions, including spacewalk procedures and lunar excursionmodules procedures.

I did some of the testing on Apollo, but not a whole bunchbecause I was only in initial training and we got there fast, heexplained.

In the early days of the space program we did it right andwe did it fast. It was project management. Heres the project.The goal is the moon. What are the requirements? What doesthe moon impose upon you to get there?

Musgrave would also assist in the design and development

of NASAs Skylab program and served as backup pilot for therst Skylab mission. Musgrave was instrumental in the designof the spacesuits, life support systems, airlocks and mannedmaneuvering units that would be used for spacewalks and otherextravehicular activity on NASAs space shule missions.

For Musgrave, designing something like the spacesuit wasjust another new playing eld.

What are the rules of the game? What do I have to know?How do I get to the goal? Im always looking at geing the jobdone. Thats what I do in life. Thats what I teach. Get the job

done. Its an outcome. Its a result. Its a goal. Its a game. Sowhat are the rules of the game and how do I get procient andhow do I get good at this new business and go and do it?

Musgrave credits much of his project managementexpertise to working with, and learning from, rocket scientistWernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket.

I saw the project management he did in the 1960s leadingup to Apollo and the Saturn V and I learned along the way.I learned about vision, leadership and all those businessprinciples.

Musgrave would make his rst trip into outer space as partof the maiden voyage of the Space Shule Challenger in 1983.As part of the mission, Musgrave performed the rst spacewalko of the shule using the spacesuit that he had designed.

Despite his familiarity with the equipment, it was still anexperience that he could only prepare for in his imagination.

There are no simulators for spacewalk. We use a watertank, but its a bad simulator, he said. When you go upsidedown in the water you are still carrying all your weight. You arecarrying 170 pounds on your collarbone and the blood rushes toyour head.

Only in your imagination does a spacewalk really exist.But it feels spectacular to look at the earth 300 miles below, andit feels spectacular to work and oat in that free-fall condition.

Working in space is quite a dierent experience thanworking on land. Without gravity, tools and equipment cansimply oat away, never to be seen again. As such, Musgraveexplained 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 aboutthe perfect moves, the moves you have to make to get the jobdone. Its the moves and the choreography of the tools andinstruments and the whole process you have to go through. Youhope your imagination got it right. If not youll stumble a lile

bit.

Story Musgrave, Former NASA Astronaut


3/4BGS INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SPRING 2012 WWW.BETAGAMMASIGMA.ORG

Musgrave also put his choreography and imagination tothe test during his h trip to space, on the Shule Endeavour,during three spacewalks to repair the Hubble Space Telescope a repair that was necessitated by a awed mirror during thetelescopes construction.

Things with the Hubble were going incredibly badly.Congress told us were going to look at how you do and if youdont do well we cant continue to approve plans for a space

station, Musgrave recalled. The space station requires 80spacewalks. You cant abandon it half way through. Congressneeded the condence to know we knew what we were doing.

Despite the extra weight riding on his shoulders to repairthe telescope, Musgrave insists that the pressure was not a factorin performing his task.

Did I feel the pressure? No. I was on the playing eld, andI was playing the game. But each move that was made had to

be made to perfection. I used to train with Dorothy Hamill, theOlympic gure 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. Thats when she knew what she had to do, and wouldrepetitively practice until she had it down and could pull it owithout being raled by the pressure, not even at the Olympics.

Spacewalking is an athletic event. I dont care whats inyour head. Only your body does the job. With gure skating,your body is where the grace and execution come from. Thats

Story Musgrave (continued from page 25)

what will win the prize. So no maer what the pressure is,the focus has to be on perfection of the movement. Same withDorothy. Its how your body moves. Pressure does not get the

job done. The heat is there, but you learn to like the heat, if youperceive it at all.

Musgrave ew his last mission with NASA in 1996 andle 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 realestate development company.

I like palm trees. Ive always liked palm trees. Im a farmkid. I can grow stu, he explained. Ive grown almost 15,000palm trees. You look out the window and here they are. Ivegrown all of them from seed. But Im good at that.

With his real estate development company, Musgrave worksto transform parcels of unimproved land into lots that are readyfor 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 thesegorgeous trees, he said. Every parcel is dierent. I work withwhats there to start with. Im a landscape architect. Ive been

doing this since age ve. I know heavy equipment, I know howto maintain equipment and I maintain my own equipment. Im atree surgeon. I climb trees with a chain saw and I do what I do.Thats the world I was raised in.

Other entrepreneurial ventures include a productioncompany in Australia that produces books, DVDs and television

In a great spacewalk you think about yourself as a ballerina atthe opening night of the ballet. You think about the perfect moves,the moves you have to make to get the job done. Its the movesand the choreography of the tools and instruments and the whole

process you have to go through. You hope your imagination got itright. If not youll stumble a little bit.Story Musgrave, Former NASA Astronaut


4/4BGS INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE SPRING 2012 WWW.BETAGAMMASIGMA.

Did you know that the Beta Gamma Sigma key

has been to outer space? In 1985, Story Musgrave

brought a BGS lapel pin with him aboard Space Shuttle

Challenger. Following the ight, Musgrave sent the key

to Beta Gamma Sigma for safekeeping in the Societys

archives. Musgrave was reunited with the key as part of

his interview with BGS, and is shown here holding it.

programming, and a sculpture company in Burbank, Calif. Musgrave also spendsa week per month in California working for Applied Minds, Inc. where he helpsto invent the future for other bigger companies.

Never leing the grass grow beneath his feet, Musgrave does independentconsulting work for a variety of companies and performs multimediapresentations on topics such as vision, leadership, motivation, safety, quality,innovation, creativity, design, simplicity, beauty and ecology.

They think theyll get me to just go and give a talk, but it never ends witha talk. They like the stu I give them and they want more, so then I enter arelationship. I give them more. I coax them.

Musgraves clients come from a wide array of industries, and even includethe U.S. Coast Guard. One particular area that Musgrave focuses on is projectmanagement, 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 tocompanies in London and New York. Thats aerospace, sure, but great projectmanagement is great project management and I dont 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 theaudience.

Its about looking at where you want to go. Its about geing goodspecications on the requirements that the project will impose upon you and thenits o to the design process. Designing something, that when put together, will dowhat you ask it to do, he said.

There are great books on project management, and I know whats in the

books. But I have rst hand experience with great project management andhorrible project management. I know how to take the great project managementof the 60s and the horrible project management that NASA had in the 90sand 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 anew set of projects and challenges. This 76-year-old would haveit no other way.

There are many dierent days. Cant say there is a typicalday. Ill work in my sandbox from the time the sun comesup. Then Ill come in at some time and work my businesses.Then Ill work for the dierent clients I have.

And the fact that some might consider him to be a bitof a wanderer has not been lost on Musgrave. Its a notion

that he embraces.I am a wanderer. I am a traveler. I am an explorer. Im

always looking for something that lights up my passions.But its important to understand that I bring 100percent of my past with me. I never ignoreanything I ever learned in the past. I take itwith 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 eld bydoing it the same way every time. Imlike Windows or Apple I only have oneoperating system. I do the same thing everytime, he said. I xed farm equipment, I

xed airplanes, I xed people, and thats whythey put me in space to x Hubble. Because Iwas used to xing things, and thats a true path.

But regardless of his many life experiences, orwherever life may yet take him, Musgrave still bringsit all back to his days on the farm in Massachuses.

Who I was as a kid, thats my hero. The kidbrought me to a place in life where I could pursueopportunities presented to me. The kid got me there.Thats my hero, and thats the important part of mycareer. The kid got me to a place in life where I couldtake advantage of opportunities that came my way.In life a door opens, you jump in and go or you dont.For me, when a door opens, Im in.

profile article - story musgrave

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