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Surgeon, Pilot, PoetAstronaut – Renaissance Man Savors Last Shuttle Flight Seattle Times (1996) Waitresses don't believe him when he asks for a senior citizen discount. Maybe it's his physique. Maybe it's his sparkling blue eyes. Maybe it's because he blends in with his colleagues, each of them a generation younger. They're all NASA astronauts. So is he. He speaks with certainty about parallel universes—about extraterrestrial life, and about changing gravity at his command. He says that changing his gravity involves no more than retraining his mind to ignore the dizzying array of visual clues in the surrounding environment.

I'm the only one I know that sleeps floating. It's delicious. You don't know where you are, and after a while, because your limbs aren't touching anything, you lose sense that you even have them. " 
           – NASA Astronaut Dr. Story Musgrave

One of the astronaut corps' most elegant thinkers and communicators, Story Musgrave is an accomplished pilot, surgeon, mechanic, poet, designer and philosopher. He has written 25 scientific papers in the areas of aerospace medicine and physiology, temperature regulation, exercise physiology and clinical surgery. As one of NASA’s most experienced astronauts, Story has flown on six space flights; he performed the first shuttle spacewalk on Challenger’s maiden flight; he conducted two classified Department of Defense missions; he has spacewalked to repair the ailing Hubble telescope; and, on his last flight, he operated an electronic chip-manufacturing satellite aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. Story participated in the design and development of all space shuttle extravehicular activity (EVA) equipment for his missions—including spacesuits, life support systems, airlocks, and manned maneuvering units. Throughout his 30-year career with NASA, Story enriched his experiences by capturing the essence of spaceflight through a variety of mediums including photography, poetry and personal experiments. Story has seven graduate degrees in math, computers, chemistry, medicine, physiology, literature and psychology. He has been awarded 20 honorary doctorates.

Follow your heart. One step at a time, you can build a very powerful repertoire to offer to the world. That’s who you are. " 
           – Story Musgrave



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