Story Musgrave was born in 1935 on a dairy farm in Stockbridge, MA. He graduated from St. Mark’s School in Southborough, MA in 1953. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University, a Masters of Business Administration degree from University of California Los Angeles, a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marietta College, a Doctorate in Medicine from Colombia University, a Master of Science from the University of Kentucky, and a Master of Arts from the University of Huston. He also has been awarded 20 honorary doctorates.
Musgrave joined the United States Marine Corps in 1953, where he was an aircraft electrician and an engine mechanic while completing duties in Korea, Japan, and Hawaii. Over the next 55 years he started flying with the Marines and accumulated over 18,000 hours in over 160 different aircrafts. As a parachutist he has over 500 free falls, including over 100 experimental free-fall descents for the study of human aerodynamics.
In 1967 Musgrave was selected as a scientist- astronaut by NASA and became an astronaut for 30 years. He flew on six space flights, STS-6 Challenger, STS-51F/Spacelab-2 Challenger, STS-33 Discovery, STS-44 Atlantis, STS-61 Endeavour, and STS-80 Columbia. He performed the first space walk on the Challengers first mission and was the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Telescope repair mission on his last space flight. He has spent a total of 1,281 hours 59 minutes, 22 seconds in space.
Currently Musgrave operates a palm farm in Orlando, FL, a production company in Sydney Australia, and a sculpture company in Burbank, CA. He also is a landscape architect, concept artist with Walt Disney Imagineering, innovator with Applied Minds Inc, a professor of design at Art Center College of Design, and performs multimedia presentations on a variety of topics ranging from leadership to ecology. He holds 7 master’s degrees and has been awarded 20 honorary doctorates. He is married to his wife Amanda, and has 7 children and 3 grandchildren.
