Story Musgrave Interview (page: 2 / 7) Dean of American Astronauts	Print Interview

Was there a person that inspired you when you were growing up?

Story Musgrave: When I was very young I led a life of isolation. We had a thousand-acre farm and really didn't have any visitors. They either weren't permitted, or didn't dare come into that environment. So I can say it was myself and the universe out taking a walk.

What about a teacher?

Story Musgrave: Later on I did have teachers who were really spectacular, great humans.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had a great teacher, Frederick Avis, in biology. I first did some surgery as a teenager. Did some really good research in biology, in transplantation of fertilized eggs. We were the first to do that. It's not much, nowadays you're transplanting genetic material, but back in the late '40s it was a pioneering effort.

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That was in high school? What high school was this?

Story Musgrave: This was St. Martin's School in Southborough, Massachusetts. Yes, that was in high school. I took care of the rabbits, of course, because I was the farm boy who could do magic with animals. I can still do anything with animals.

When you say you can do anything with animals, what does that mean?

Story Musgrave: I have a great relationship with animals, and with children. I get to their level. I try to see the way a child looks at the world, it's hugely different. The way other creatures see this environment is hugely different. We look upon our environment and think that what we see is reality, and that is not true. This environment -- this room -- is not reality, it is the way we are designed to perceive it. A bat flying around in this room, would perceive it very differently, because a bat is looking at ultrasonic information.

With animals, or birds, or children, I will try to see it the way they see it. To have that kind of empathy, and then to communicate in that way. I try to transcend my own self, and my own parochial biases.

If we ever start communicating with living creatures from other planets, the number one priority is, how are you going to communicate information? Even between different cultures here on Earth, you get into communication problems. To see people and dolphins working together is unbelievably exciting to me. I think of how we're going to communicate with creatures from other places, and that's an unbelievably exciting thing.

From what I've read, you wouldn't be surprised if that happened.

Story Musgrave: The statistics of life out there and the statistics of intelligent beings and advanced civilization is a certainty, the way I look at it. It has not been accepted, because we've been in an anthropocentric era. People have wanted to place themselves in a totally unique position, because they mix up physical uniqueness with faith and meaning.

Statistically, it's a certainty that it is out there. When we look at our own environment, at the way life has come into being here on earth, we only have one data point here. Instead of looking at this marvel and assuming that it is absolutely unique in a universe that has billions times billions of galaxies and stars, the first assumption should be that the rest of the universe is the same as this.

To look at one data point and say, "The whole rest of the universe has got to be different than this one," does not make logical sense. But it's been that way, through this anthropocentric era. "I am the center of the universe, the universe goes around the earth, and me." Once you've transcended that, then common sense would say that the creation and evolution of life into complex and intelligent creatures is probably a cosmic imperative. It is probably a force. If you want to get into science, it's the second law of thermodynamics. These things will happen.

Now, I think it's a certainty that that has happened and is happening. The other problem though is distances, and scales, and times and light years. You're going to try to communicate with beings which have long since passed, and you catch their...by the time you get their message they will have gone by. That planet may not even be in existence, by the time you get the message.

That scale somehow...and I believe it's also possible, although of course I can't say how, but we need to somehow transcend the distances that we see and the speed of light. But I also think that we shouldn't rule that out, that's a possibility.

What books were important to you as a child?

Story Musgrave: I never read a single book as a child. I did not read as a child. I worked on the farm. I had books in the classroom, but that was it. I never read a single book outside of the classroom.

What books were important to you later on?

Story Musgrave: Later, of course, I devoured books. I always have one with me. I like reading, in general, but literature is my number one, the thing that I like to read the most.

You've talked about having a strong connection with some of the American writers of the 19th century, what did Emerson and Thoreau mean to you?

Story Musgrave: Both Emerson and Thoreau, and in particular for myself, Whitman, the American transcendentalists, they went out into nature to find God. Their spirituality was in nature, even though Emerson was a preacher on the pulpit, he ended up going out into nature for direct, face-to-face communication with God, if you want to call all of this creation part of God.

Thoreau, of course, did the same thing. Whitman expressed the whole universe in his poetry and in his catalogues. That attitude almost defines what we call American romanticism, or American transcendentalism. I feel particularly close to them, because I am now out in the universe. I'm in a position to see nature from another point of view, to be outside the earth and see the big picture. To have an absolutely clear shot at the skies and to see stars that you can't see from down here, Magellanic clouds, auroras, a new perspective of nature.

You can go back a hundred years earlier to the British romantics, the Lake Poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, and you see the same thing, whereby people come face to face with the universe. They are looking for direct revelation and communication from God's creation.

It's clear to see why I like the English romantics and the American transcendentalists. I like their poetry as literature but also, from a philosophical point of view, I have very close ties to them.

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