The Associated Press
By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The older he gets, the more
frightened he is.
When Story Musgrave rockets into orbit on his sixth shuttle
flight, he will become the oldest man ever in space. And he will be
very, very afraid.
Considering all the risks he's endured in his 61 years -- an
ex-Marine, he has logged 17,700 hours in airplanes and 500
parachute jumps -- Musgrave feels lucky to still be alive. His Nov.
8 launch aboard Columbia is yet one more risk, one he readily
accepts for love of space.
Space is his calling for better AND worse.
Better is exploring the final frontier, whether on the ground as
a Mission Control capsule communicator or in orbit as the chief
repairman for the Hubble Space Telescope.
Worse -- no, worst -- is being hurled into orbit by more than a
half-million gallons of explosive fuel and two giant firecrackers.
Fly alongside Musgrave and this is what you'd hear once the
booster rockets light: ``I'm just scared to death, man. I hope this
thing holds together.''
This, as the other crew members ``hoot and holler and carry on
like it's a party.''
``Probably they're more appropriate than I am,'' he says
quietly, gently. ``They're doing the only thing that you can do
when you're in that situation.''
Only one person in the world has been in ``that situation'' six
times, at least until Musgrave soars: moonwalker John Young, who
flew twice during Gemini, twice during Apollo and twice on space
shuttle Columbia. NASA still considers Young an active astronaut at
age 66 even though he's in management and will never fly in space
again.
Ex-astronaut Vance Brand was 59 the last time he flew in space
in 1990 and set the space age record.
Breaking the age barrier doesn't mean much to Musgrave, a
surgeon as well as an unpublished poet with six academic degrees
(he's working on master's theses for two more, in psychology and
history).
Nor does tying the record for the most spaceflights. Or becoming
the first person to fly six times in space shuttles. Or becoming
the first person to fly in all five space shuttles: Challenger in
1983 and 1985, Discovery in 1989, Atlantis in 1991, Endeavour in
1993 and, soon, Columbia.
``I feel very privileged to be in my 60s and to be going into
space,'' says Musgrave, a healthy and indefatigable 5-foot-10,
152-pounder who runs to stay in shape. ``But the important thing is
I've been able to be on the job and to be able to live my calling
for 30 years.''
Dr. F. Story Musgrave (F. for Franklin) was working during the
mid-1960s at the University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center in
Lexington when he got the calling.
It was, he says, an epiphany.
NASA was starting to hire scientists, not just test pilots, as
astronauts. Musgrave signed on in 1967. His colleagues flew to the
moon the following year and landed the year after that. Musgrave,
thinking Mars was not too far off, waited patiently for his crack
at the moon, but it was not to be. Neither was Mars.
The Apollo program ended after six manned lunar landings. Then
came Skylab, then Apollo-Soyuz. Still Musgrave waited. He'd joined
NASA as ``a long-time investor and that was for better or for
worse.''
``Whether I flew or didn't fly, or flew once or flew 10 times,
that was not the issue,'' he says. ``The issue was I had found my
calling.''
Musgrave finally made it to orbit in 1983 -- 16 long years after
the National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration chose him as an
astronaut -- and performed the first spacewalk of the shuttle era.
Four more shuttle flights followed over the next decade,
including the one that made him famous: the Hubble Space Telescope
repair. He was the lead spacewalker on that hugely successful
mission three years ago; the mechanics came naturally for this
Massachusetts farm boy who had kept his family's tractor running a
half-century earlier.
Soon everyone seemed to know, and wanted to know better, this
amiable, soft-spoken, completely bald astronaut who had helped save
Hubble and who openly shared his fears and belief in intelligent
extraterrestrial life.
He'd be in Manhattan and someone would walk up and say,
``Story?'' He even attracted the attention of the woman who was
pestering David Letterman; she posed as a reporter and kept calling
Musgrave at his office until NASA security intervened.
Musgrave embraces it all. It is, after all, his calling.
``One thing that has been missing is the heart and the soul'' of
the space program, he says. ``I do not think that we have given to
people what the inner experience is, what is going on in the heart,
in the head, what you're feeling, what you're thinking. ... That's
what human spaceflight is about.''
His upcoming flight, a 16-day science mission, won't be nearly
as dazzling as his last. Although two spacewalks are planned,
Musgrave will stay inside as two younger astronauts go out to
practice station-building techniques, and will monitor a
crystal-growing satellite.
For his four crewmates, in their 30s and 40s, he's a mission
highlight.
``Story makes the flight extra special,'' says commander Kenneth
Cockrell, at 46 the next-oldest on the crew.
The average age of a NASA astronaut is just under 42, according
to space agency statistics, and the average length of an
astronaut's career is 11 years.
Although NASA has no official age limit for its 102 astronauts,
medical exams are required. The Russian Space Agency, on the other
hand, has an age cutoff at about 50 for its cosmonauts, although
that rule sometimes is bent.
Commercial airline pilots, by comparison, must retire at age 60.
To be fair, Musgrave will not fly the shuttle. He will be a
passenger. Still, every crew member has a vital role, especially if
there's trouble.
``As a 61-year-old person, do I worry about Story? No. Maybe
some other 61-year-old I might,'' says David Leestma, director of
NASA's flight crew operations and a former astronaut. ``Story has
kept himself in very good condition. He's a great asset with his
experience in space.''
On the Hubble mission, Musgrave performed three grueling
spacewalks in five days after months of 16-hour workdays. He was 58
at the time.
Three years later, he's still working 16-hour days to prepare
for space.
But for how long?
``Nobody's going to kick you out of the office just because you
get old,'' says his spacewalking partner on the Hubble mission,
Jeffrey Hoffman, 51. ``On the other hand, I don't think anybody's
going to retire at 75 as an active astronaut. Sooner or later we
all have to do something else. Even Story.''
Musgrave says his bosses have told him not to expect another
shuttle mission. He hasn't protested. He hasn't even asked why.
When he gets back from this flight, he plans to look for a job in
space education that stresses creativity, in or outside NASA.
``I don't think it's age,'' he says. ``I think it's someone
saying, `You've had a hell of a run at it and it's just time.' ''
Someone has to say it, because Musgrave can't.
``I am not able to walk away from this business. I am not able
to walk away from the airplanes. I am not able to walk away from
what spaceflight is and the night before and the whole business of
learning this game and doing it to perfection. I am simply unable
to set it down, and someone, sometime, is going to have to do it
for me.''
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