Profiling the Best in Business

As the worlds first truly international honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma members can be found all around the
globe. BGS members are the Best in Business, and represent a wide array of business backgrounds, disciplines
and experiences. There is no doubt about it, the Societys members are a diversely talented and extremely eclectic
and successful group. That said, only one member can truly lay claim to, quite literally, being out of this world.
As a NASA astronaut for over 30 years, Story Musgrave (BGS 1983, Syracuse University)
was sent into space on six shuttle flights, spending more than 53 days outside the earths
atmosphere. If that wasnt a strong enough bullet point on his resume, he also:
Designed the spacesuit currently in use by American astronauts;

Conducted the first shuttle spacewalk during the first flight of the Space
Shuttle Challenger; and
Served as the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Space Telescope repair
mission.
In addition to his time with the space program, Musgrave has accumulated seven
graduate degrees in a wide array of subjects including math, chemistry, medicine,
physiology, literature, psychology and business.
He has also served as an aircraft electrician and air mechanic
for the U.S. Marines, has flown more than 18,000 hours in over 160 aircraft, and
is an accomplished parachutist with over 800 freefalls.
Thats more time spent in the air than me, and I have wings.
As if all that was not enough, Musgrave is a medical doctor who from 1967
to 1989, while working for NASA, served as a part-time surgeon at Denver
General Hospital. During the same period he worked as a part-time professor
of physiology and biophysics at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.
Wow! Thats a lot of stuff. I feel like less of an owl in comparison. That said,
allow me to introduce you to Story Musgrave - a truly unique and talented, not to
mention charismatic and inspiring Beta Gamma Sigma lifetime member.

- Professor Elwell

Professor Elwell is the official

mascot of Beta Gamma Sigmas
Centennial Celebration.

By: Seth Treptow, BGS Communications Director

rom the outside looking in, one might think Story

Musgrave has had quite the random life. But spend some
time with the man, and you will see that it all makes
perfect sense. He is just doing what he does.
My basic mantra is getting the job done, Musgrave said.
Its looking at outcomes; looking at results. Its looking at the
finish line and getting the job done. Thats my basic overall
theme.
While his life and various career paths would eventually
take him to some amazing places, he gives a great deal of the
credit to who he was as a child growing up on his parents farm
near Stockbridge, Mass., where he was getting the job done
since the age of five.
Im a farm kid. Being a farm kid was instrumental in what
I ended up doing, Musgrave explained. People often ask if I
always wanted to be an astronaut. Not in the 1930s. I wanted to
be a farmer.
I drove everything on the farm by the age of nine. By 12
or 13 I (was operating) heavy equipment. I could keep it going
when it wasnt working exactly the way it should. I became a
pretty good mechanic early on.

24 bgs international exchange Spring 2012 www.betagammasigma.org

That mechanical ability is a key component of the person

that Musgrave would become. It was a skill set that he found
particularly useful while serving as a military airplane
mechanic.
When Korea came up I ran off and joined the Marines,
Musgrave said. Eventually I was a crew chief and had my
own three airplanes. They were my planes. I coordinated the
maintenance on them and I was the one that signed off to go fly.
I looked after these planes and Im the one that certified they
were ready to go off to war. I did that at age 18 so I grew up
very fast.
Following his service with the Marines, Musgrave enrolled
at Syracuse University where, in 1958, he received a Bachelor of
Science degree in mathematics and statistics. Upon graduation,
he went to work for the Eastman Kodak Company as a
mathematician and operations analyst.
I was looking at business problems and reducing them to
mathematical formulas that could be dealt with by a computer.
Thats what we do all the time now, thats what the world is,
but this was back in 1958. I was into a lot of exotic math, but
the basic idea was to look at the real world and convert it to
digital.

From there, Musgrave went on to graduate school at

UCLA where he studied operations research as well as system
engineering, programming and computer hardware. This would
lead to his next career transition.
I got interested in the brain. So I decided to go do the
brain. It was a leap off into some other world, which is what Ive
done my entire life, and it works, he said.
Musgrave added a bachelors degree in chemistry from
Marietta College and, in 1964, received his Doctor of Medicine
degree from Columbia University
I studied neurophysiology and neurosurgery, he said.
Then the space program came along and interrupted my career
in medicine.
I could have looked at different windows of opportunity,
but the National Academy of Science and NASA started talking
about flying people with formal educations, people with a
doctorate, into space, Musgrave said. When I saw that on
the bulletin board of the medical school I said to myself, My
goodness, thats me.
You look at everything I had ever done my flying, my
fixing stuff and I knew that everything I had ever done was
leading to this moment.
In August 1967, two years before Neil Armstrong stepped
foot on the moon, Musgrave received word that he would be
joining the astronaut ranks.
When I was selected, I was excited. It was a job, but it
wasnt just a job. It was a calling, he recalled. At the same time
it was just another playing field. Thats all you can ask for in
life, a big playing field with huge opportunities and challenges.
Thats what you want. You want to be challenged. You want
something you have to live up to.
Following his initial astronaut training, Musgrave was put
to work by NASA developing various aspects of the Apollo
missions, including spacewalk procedures and lunar excursion
modules procedures.
I did some of the testing on Apollo, but not a whole bunch
because I was only in initial training and we got there fast, he
explained.
In the early days of the space program we did it right and
we did it fast. It was project management. Heres the project.
The goal is the moon. What are the requirements? What does
the moon impose upon you to get there?
Musgrave would also assist in the design and development

of NASAs Skylab program and served as backup pilot for the

first Skylab mission. Musgrave was instrumental in the design
of the spacesuits, life support systems, airlocks and manned
maneuvering units that would be used for spacewalks and other
extravehicular activity on NASAs space shuttle missions.
For Musgrave, designing something like the spacesuit was
just another new playing field.
What are the rules of the game? What do I have to know?
How do I get to the goal? Im always looking at getting the job
done. Thats what I do in life. Thats what I teach. Get the job
done. Its an outcome. Its a result. Its a goal. Its a game. So
what are the rules of the game and how do I get proficient and
how do I get good at this new business and go and do it?
Musgrave credits much of his project management
expertise to working with, and learning from, rocket scientist
Wernher von Braun, the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket.
I saw the project management he did in the 1960s leading
up to Apollo and the Saturn V and I learned along the way.
I learned about vision, leadership and all those business
principles.
Musgrave would make his first trip into outer space as part
of the maiden voyage of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983.
As part of the mission, Musgrave performed the first spacewalk
off of the shuttle using the spacesuit that he had designed.
Despite his familiarity with the equipment, it was still an
experience that he could only prepare for in his imagination.
There are no simulators for spacewalk. We use a water
tank, but its a bad simulator, he said. When you go upside
down in the water you are still carrying all your weight. You are
carrying 170 pounds on your collarbone and the blood rushes to
your head.
Only in your imagination does a spacewalk really exist.
But it feels spectacular to look at the earth 300 miles below, and
it feels spectacular to work and float in that free-fall condition.
Working in space is quite a different experience than
working on land. Without gravity, tools and equipment can
simply float away, never to be seen again. As such, Musgrave
explained that every movement he took had to be carefully
practiced and rehearsed.
In a great spacewalk you think about yourself as a
ballerina at the opening night of the ballet. You think about
the perfect moves, the moves you have to make to get the job
done. Its the moves and the choreography of the tools and
instruments and the whole process you have to go through. You
hope your imagination got it right. If not youll stumble a little
bit.

What are the rules of the game? What

do I have to know? How do I get to the
goal? Im always looking at getting the job
done. Thats what I do in life. Thats what
I teach. Get the job done. Its an outcome.
Its a result. Its a goal. Its a game.
Story Musgrave, Former NASA Astronaut

bgs international exchange Spring 2012 www.betagammasigma.org 25

In a great spacewalk you think about yourself as a ballerina at

the opening night of the ballet. You think about the perfect moves,
the moves you have to make to get the job done. Its the moves
and the choreography of the tools and instruments and the whole
process you have to go through. You hope your imagination got it
right. If not youll stumble a little bit.
Story Musgrave, Former NASA Astronaut
Story Musgrave (continued from page 25)

Musgrave also put his choreography and imagination to

the test during his fifth trip to space, on the Shuttle Endeavour,
during three spacewalks to repair the Hubble Space Telescope
a repair that was necessitated by a flawed mirror during the
telescopes construction.
Things with the Hubble were going incredibly badly.
Congress told us were going to look at how you do and if you
dont do well we cant continue to approve plans for a space
station, Musgrave recalled. The space station requires 80
spacewalks. You cant abandon it half way through. Congress
needed the confidence to know we knew what we were doing.
Despite the extra weight riding on his shoulders to repair
the telescope, Musgrave insists that the pressure was not a factor
in performing his task.
Did I feel the pressure? No. I was on the playing field, and
I was playing the game. But each move that was made had to
be made to perfection. I used to train with Dorothy Hamill, the
Olympic figure skater on how to do spacewalks.
Dorothy Hamill? Yes, you read that correctly.
Dorothy knew what she was good at, and she was good
at routines. She played with her routines for the Olympics.
She played and played and played until she converged on a
solution. Thats when she knew what she had to do, and would
repetitively practice until she had it down and could pull it off
without being rattled by the pressure, not even at the Olympics.
Spacewalking is an athletic event. I dont care whats in
your head. Only your body does the job. With figure skating,
your body is where the grace and execution come from. Thats

26 bgs international exchange Spring 2012 www.betagammasigma.org

what will win the prize. So no matter what the pressure is,
the focus has to be on perfection of the movement. Same with
Dorothy. Its how your body moves. Pressure does not get the
job done. The heat is there, but you learn to like the heat, if you
perceive it at all.
Musgrave flew his last mission with NASA in 1996 and
left the space program a year later to pursue private interests
which, to say the least, have been varied and numerous. He
spends much of his time working in his sandbox of Orlando,
Fla., where he currently operates a palm tree farm and a real
estate development company.
I like palm trees. Ive always liked palm trees. Im a farm
kid. I can grow stuff, he explained. Ive grown almost 15,000
palm trees. You look out the window and here they are. Ive
grown all of them from seed. But Im good at that.
With his real estate development company, Musgrave works
to transform parcels of unimproved land into lots that are ready
for home construction.
My basic model is somewhat like a fairway of a golf course.
Open space in the middle but on the periphery you have these
gorgeous trees, he said. Every parcel is different. I work with
whats there to start with. Im a landscape architect. Ive been
doing this since age five. I know heavy equipment, I know how
to maintain equipment and I maintain my own equipment. Im a
tree surgeon. I climb trees with a chain saw and I do what I do.
Thats the world I was raised in.
Other entrepreneurial ventures include a production
company in Australia that produces books, DVDs and television

programming, and a sculpture company in Burbank, Calif. Musgrave also spends

a week per month in California working for Applied Minds, Inc. where he helps
to invent the future for other bigger companies.
Never letting the grass grow beneath his feet, Musgrave does independent
consulting work for a variety of companies and performs multimedia
presentations on topics such as vision, leadership, motivation, safety, quality,
innovation, creativity, design, simplicity, beauty and ecology.
They think theyll get me to just go and give a talk, but it never ends with
a talk. They like the stuff I give them and they want more, so then I enter a
relationship. I give them more. I coax them.
Musgraves clients come from a wide array of industries, and even include
the U.S. Coast Guard. One particular area that Musgrave focuses on is project
management, a topic he gained a unique perspective on from his time at NASA.
I teach the project management of the 1960s of going to the moon today to
companies in London and New York. Thats aerospace, sure, but great project
management is great project management and I dont care if you are a bank,
making cars or whatever else you are doing.
As far as Musgrave is concerned, the lessons are applicable regardless of the
audience.
Its about looking at where you want to go. Its about getting good
specifications on the requirements that the project will impose upon you and then
its off to the design process. Designing something, that when put together, will do
what you ask it to do, he said.
There are great books on project management, and I know whats in the
books. But I have first hand experience with great project management and
horrible project management. I know how to take the great project management
of the 60s and the horrible project management that NASA had in the 90s
and the new century and I know how not to do it.
Simply put, there is no typical day in the life of Story Musgrave.
Between his various projects and ventures, each day presents a
new set of projects and challenges. This 76-year-old would have
it no other way.
There are many different days. Cant say there is a typical
day. Ill work in my sandbox from the time the sun comes
up. Then Ill come in at some time and work my businesses.
Then Ill work for the different clients I have.
And the fact that some might consider him to be a bit
of a wanderer has not been lost on Musgrave. Its a notion
that he embraces.
I am a wanderer. I am a traveler. I am an explorer. Im
always looking for something that lights up my passions.
But its important to understand that I bring 100
percent of my past with me. I never ignore
anything I ever learned in the past. I take it
with me and apply that to what I do today.
People say, How do you do so much?
I only do one thing. I learn the new game.
I put myself into a new playing field by
doing it the same way every time. Im
like Windows or Apple I only have one
operating system. I do the same thing every
time, he said. I fixed farm equipment, I
fixed airplanes, I fixed people, and thats why
they put me in space to fix Hubble. Because I
was used to fixing things, and thats a true path.
But regardless of his many life experiences, or
wherever life may yet take him, Musgrave still brings
it all back to his days on the farm in Massachusetts.
Did you know that the Beta Gamma Sigma key
Who I was as a kid, thats my hero. The kid
has been to outer space? In 1985, Story Musgrave
brought me to a place in life where I could pursue
brought a BGS lapel pin with him aboard Space Shuttle
opportunities presented to me. The kid got me there.
Challenger. Following the flight, Musgrave sent the key
Thats my hero, and thats the important part of my
to Beta Gamma Sigma for safekeeping in the Societys
career. The kid got me to a place in life where I could
archives. Musgrave was reunited with the key as part of
take advantage of opportunities that came my way.
his interview with BGS, and is shown here holding it.
In life a door opens, you jump in and go or you dont.
For me, when a door opens, Im in.
bgs international exchange Spring 2012 www.betagammasigma.org 27