Story Musgrave, M.D.

Story Musgrave was born in 1935 on a dairy farm in Stockbridge, MA. He explored the forests alone at 3 and by 5 floated his homebuilt rafts on the rivers. He rode combines at 7, drove trucks and tractors at 10 and when alone in remote fields repaired them by 13. He soloed an aircraft at 13 and over the next 71 years flew 18,000 hours including 7000 hours in supersonic aircraft and the earning of U.S. Air Force and NASA Wings. By himself he created and operated the Berkshire Maple Syrup company at 14.

He never finished school, ran off with the U. S. Marines at 17 where he was an aircraft engine mechanic, crew chief and plane captain at Marine Airbase K-6, Korea and on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. During college he drove and repaired M47 and M48 tanks with the Marine Corps Active Reserve. He is a parachutist with over 800 jumps including 100 experimental freefalls involving the first study of the aerodynamics of the free flying human body.

He has 6 graduate degrees in math, computers, chemistry, medicine, biological physics, and literature and has been awarded 22 honorary doctorates. He was a part-time trauma surgeon at the University of Colorado Medical Center for the duration of his astronaut career.

He was a NASA Astronaut for over 30 years and flew on six spaceflights. He performed the first shuttle spacewalk on Challenger’s first flight, was a pilot on an astronomy mission, conducted two classified DOD missions, was the lead spacewalker on the first Hubble Space Telescope repair mission and operated an electronic chip manufacturing satellite on Columbia. He was the lead communicator in the NASA Mission Control Center for 25 other missions.

Today, Musgrave is a producer/director of multimedia, a landscape architect, a heavy equipment operator, an artist/designer/engineer with Applied Minds LLC, a Professor of Design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. and he is a consultant and speaker on topics such as design driven innovation, problem solving, personal and professional development, operational excellence, human performance, reliability, quality and safety.

He has 7 beautiful children: Lorelei, Scott, Holly, Todd, Jeff, Lane and “little” Story, ranging from ages 61 to 14 years, 3 beautiful grandchildren, and a beautiful wife, Amanda.