Story Musgrave

• STS -6 ( 1983)
• STS -51 F ( 1985)
• STS -33 ( 1989)
• STS -44 (1991)
• STS -61 (1993)
• STS -80 ( 1996)

Franklin Story Musgrave ( born August 19, 1935 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States) is a former American astronaut and the only one who flew into space with all five U.S. space shuttles.

Story Musgrave was married twice and now lives in Florida. He has seven children: three daughters and four sons. Musgrave has famous ancestors: Joseph Story - at that time was still story the family - who until his death 33 years and Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was in February 1812 and his son William, the sculptor and poet, and later to Italy emigrated.

Musgrave comes from broken homes. His parents were alcoholics and have finally taken the life itself. Growing up are Musgrave and his two brothers - one younger, one older - in the 1940s on a 400 -acre farm southwest of Boston, which had specialized in dairy farming. The family lived quite isolated, which was mainly due to the behavior of drinking and beating parents. Musgrave sought and found his balance in nature. He knows to remember that he had already slipped at the age of three years in many a night through the adjacent forest. 1945 his mother had enough of the abuse of her husband and moved with Musgrave to relatives - the two brothers remained with the father on the farm.

1953 Musgrave left after six years just before the exam, the St. Mark's School in Massachusetts and joined the United States Marine Corps. However, since he had no higher education in the bag him his desire to become a pilot, was denied. It was the last time in his life that he could not take a professional hurdle due to lack of educational qualifications. He made ​​up for university entrance. Since then he has made learning to his passion and has been able to achieve no less than six academic titles.

Because Musgrave was not allowed to fly, he worked for the ground crew in aircraft maintenance. To this end, he had been trained at the U.S. Naval Aviation Electrician and Instrument Technician School in Jacksonville (Florida ) for an aircraft mechanic for on-board electrical systems and instrumentation. As head of the ground staff, he served in Korea, Japan and Hawaii and had been stationed in the Far East on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp.

Returned mid-1950s in the United States, Story Musgrave started an unparalleled career in education - as a " perpetual student " (in a positive sense). He enrolled at Syracuse University in upstate New York in 1958 and received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics. In the same year he left the USMC for a short time and took a job as a mathematician and analyst at Eastman Kodak at its headquarters in Rochester (New York ) on. Then he stopped his academic Trophy further on: 1959 Master's degree in computer programming and work analysis ( University of California, Los Angeles ), 1960 Bachelor of Science in Chemistry ( Marietta College in Ohio ), 1964 Doctor of Medicine from the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Columbia University in New York City.

In his adopted home town of Lexington (Kentucky ), he then attended the Medical Center of the University of Kentucky to a medical assistant job as a surgeon. In 1965, he joined the U.S. Air Force and worked in aviation medicine. A year later he took a job at the National Heart Institute - since 1969 it is called National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ( NHLBI ) - to do research and teach. In parallel, he studied physiology and biophysics at the University of Kentucky (Master 1966).

Until 1989, Musgrave practiced his profession as a physician. As a trauma surgeon, he worked a few days a month at Denver General Hospital in Denver, Colorado to stay in practice, and was a visiting professor at the Medical Center of the University of Kentucky, where he taught physiology and biophysics.

Astronauts activity

Musgrave succeeded in August 1967 with the sixth group of NASA astronauts selected as a science to be an astronaut. Until then, the U.S. space agency was looking for only experienced jet pilots. Nevertheless, the pilot training on jet aircraft belonged to former astronaut training and so he made the 1969 Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock ( Texas) his ticket - top of his class. Since then he has ever flown. On 160 different civil and military aircraft types he has about 18,000 flight hours accumulated ( a not inconsiderable part came through his swing flights from Houston, Texas to Denver, Colorado received). He is also a flight instructor, stunt pilot and has a commercial pilot's license.

Following basic training, Story Musgrave had been involved in the development of the Skylab program and was the beginning of 1972 to the Science Pilot ( science astronaut ) the replacement crew of Skylab 2 called, the first mission to the U.S. space laboratory. During Skylab 3 and Skylab 4, he served as CapCom at the Johnson Space Center (JSC ) in Houston.

Then he presented his work force in the services of the shuttle program: he had been involved since 1974 largely necessary to the development and construction of all for spacewalks ( EVAs ) devices and equipment such as space suit life support system, or airlock. In October 1974 and in January 1976 he took part in the first two Spacelab simulations as a mission specialist.

From 1979, Musgrave worked the next five years in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory ( SAIL) at JSC, where the instruments and computer software of the shuttle will be tested. This activity was interrupted by the training preparations for his first space flight since December, 1981, he rehearsed and his partner Donald Peterson for a spacewalk with STS- sixth STS -6 was in April 1983, the maiden flight of the orbiter Challenger and Story Musgrave - after 16 years of waiting. Peterson and Musgrave led on the fourth day of flying through a four-hour EVA. Once there were problems with a space suit on STS- 5 and the scheduled three and a half hour exit had to be canceled, the STS -6 EVA was the first of the shuttle program.

Two years later, Story Musgrave went on again with the Orbiter Challenger his next space flight. STS -51 -F was known as the Spacelab -2, and was the first flight of the European space laboratory module without pressure - the experiments ( mainly in the disciplines of astronomy and astrophysics ) had been installed on three pallets in the cargo area of the Challenger. The crew worked in two shifts to maximize the utilization of the experiments. Musgrave was in his film ( Blue Team) backup pilot and resulted in demand by small attitude control systems. During takeoff and landing, he supported the two pilots.

Then Musgrave studied at the University of Houston in Texas literature. Focused on the U.S. and British poets and philosophers. He received his master's degree in 1987.

The next two flights on which Musgrave was used as a Mission Specialist, were performed for the U.S. Department of Defense: STS -33 took place in November 1989 with the Discovery and STS -44, exactly two years later with the orbiter Atlantis.

Musgrave's fifth flight set for him the greatest challenge STS -61 shuttle Endeavour in December 1993 was the first maintenance and repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. During training, he got considerable doubt as to whether the mission would be a success. So the original work processes were somewhat " unrealistic ", and the tool was good for nothing. Then there was that Musgrave injured half a year before the mission ( in a test in a vacuum chamber he put on a hand to frostbite ) and it was not sure if he would soon be well again. The planned repairs were carried out by two EVA teams, which consisted of two astronauts. Musgrave, who had planned all Hubble works on the ground, worked with Jeff Hoffman and got out three times. After the flight, he served between July 1994 and February 1996 as CapCom in the control center.

In November 1996, Musgrave set out on his sixth and final flight. At this time he was at age 61 the oldest man to fly into space. Eight hours after the launch of STS- 80, sponsored by Germany Astronomy platform ORFEUS -SPAS was suspended. For two weeks, they observed stellar objects. Students in the Federal Republic were able to be the internet. At the beginning of the fourth flight day, the plate-shaped WSF was suspended. For three days, the WSF flew alongside the Columbia. They produced in their " slipstream " a particularly pure vacuum, by granted all the molecules of the residual atmosphere of the way. On the rear side of the WSF new semiconductor for the electronics generated. The shuttle flight was just under 18 days to an end.

Retirement

Story Musgrave left the NASA not entirely voluntary ( he speaks of space as his vocation ). Already during training for STS -80 had meant to him that this would definitely be his last space flight. He wondered if he should continue to work as a scientist for the space agency, or go to the private sector. In early September 1997, his decision has been made and he left NASA. Since then, he travels the world giving lectures. He also works as a consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering, the development department of the entertainment group in Glendale (California ) and for also based in Glendale company Applied Minds, developing innovative ideas and products for American economic groups.

Story Musgrave is free-thinker, philosopher, poet and eccentric - extreme in thought and action. In the 1960s, he started out fun with skydiving and can come up with more than 600 jumps. He is a scuba diver, sailor, photographed and are happy to be a scientist to believe in the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Learning was never an end in itself for him. It did not care about academic titles, rather the propagation of their own knowledge. He studied at the University of Houston from 1987 in evening classes also psychology and history. Only after more than a decade after retiring from NASA, he went from the university.

Special features and Records

• Second man with six space flights ( by John Young)
• The only man to fly into space with all five U.S. space shuttles

Play-acting

The Berlin filmmaker Dana Ranga turned in cooperation with Musgrave a half hour documentary entitled " Story," which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in Marseilles, France in the summer of 2003. It portrays the eccentric astronaut, as he was to what he is. In addition, Musgrave had a guest appearance in the science fiction movie "Mission to Mars" by Brian De Palma from the year 2000. Therein is story briefly seen in a scene. He plays the role of himself - a CapCom. He also appeared in an episode of "Listen, Home Improvement " on.