Story Musgrave Interview (page: 3 / 7) Dean of American Astronauts	Print Interview

You're a poet yourself. What's the connection between poetry and space?

Story Musgrave: I think the experience of space needs to be communicated in terms of what is in one's head and one's heart. Most of our history in space has been communicated in terms of action -- what people do, a chronological list of events which have transpired -- as opposed to the human experience of having done those things.

It's one thing to be out working on the Hubble Telescope and doing the ballet that you do to run the tool as expertly as you can, but what's the experience of operating the tool? What's the experience of getting ready? And what's the experience of a great pass over South America?

I can relate almost the entire earth to you in terms of what a South America pass is, of what a Shark's Bay, Australia pass is. I can just roll that through my head. I think we need to capture what that experience was, and then get it into the right form.

Poetry is its own medium; it's very different than writing prose. Poetry can talk in an imagistic sense; it has particular ways of catching an environment. Meter, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, structure, all of those things are tools for bringing out the senses.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Space takes almost a new language. It's a new place. We created and evolved here on earth. We're earth-based creatures, and the magic of what goes on when you take humanity out there, it's going to take a new language to do it. And poetry has some tools in it which will, as music does, directly do you. You don't have to intellectualize music. You listen to music and it works on you and you get it. So it's a direct communication. And so, I think, a way of bringing space to people, that poetry will work.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry. I look upon that as a really powerful way to communicate the experience of space.

We've become used to thinking of space as the frontier, but now, being able to translate that experience to people who haven't been there is kind of a frontier in itself, because nobody's done it before.

Story Musgrave: No one has done it and, as an extension of my calling in space, it's extraordinarily fitting. NASA has told me they're not going to fly me anymore. That was probably a magnificent decision, maybe not for the right reasons, but if you look at it, it makes incredible sense, because obviously, I could have not stopped.

So I think it's an extension of my calling. Also, I've always looked upon it as a responsibility. There are millions of people who could have done what I have done. I have always given it my best and, when the door opened, always went in. I did that part of it, but millions could have.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It's a responsibility to have an experience up there, not just to do the doing. Since you are representative of humanity and there's millions that could have done it, it's a responsibility to, number one, have an experience and then get it into a form which does translate that experience and, as poetry works, you can hand over the same emotions. Not only the abstract concepts, but you can bring people to the same emotions which you had up there. And that's a tremendous challenge.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

You're the first space poet.

Story Musgrave: Other people have written poems about space, but I may be the first person who has formally taken creative writing courses and poetry writing courses, and studied poetic criticism with a mind to acquiring the skills to do that, to the best of my current ability.

Tell us about repairing the Hubble space telescope. It seemed like there was an awful lot of pressure on you.

Story Musgrave: I never felt the external pressure. It was there, of course. I think if we had not repaired the telescope, it would have been the end of the space station, because space station requires a huge number of space walks. I think it was fair to use the Hubble space telescope as a test case for space walks, to say, "Can NASA really do what they say they can do up there?"

Of course, people wanted it fixed. It was an egregious error of negligence that the primary mirror was not the right curvature. There were a lot of things that had failed on the telescope at a more rapid rate than they should have.

Hubble touches people. When you're looking that far out, you're giving people their place in the universe, it touches people. Science is often visual, so it doesn't need translation. It's like poetry, it touches you. There were all those reasons that this repair needed to happen. I recognized that. But when I went to work I did not feel that pressure; it's not the way I work.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I work for perfection, for perfection's sake. I don't care what the external reasons are. And it's much more like a ballerina on opening night. You've done what you've got to do. When you go out, the purpose is to turn a perfect turn. You are not thinking about the future of the company, you are not thinking about your future, you're not thinking about the critics, it is you and the perfect turn. It is an Olympic high jumper and the bar, there is nothing else there. And it's taking that form, and those steps, it is doing the pattern, the rhythm that you have built to accomplish the job. And so, getting ready, I choreographed the thing right down to where every finger, every toe, where 300 tools are. How the tools are going to move around. Every work site, what is the right body position to get in? How you restrain yourself, how you get the job done, and not really even touch the telescope.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

That was what it was about. It's the same as an Olympic athlete, but it's really much more like a ballerina, because it's a zero-G dance out there. It's you, it's bodies, and it's tools, and five days of work.

That's not pressure, that is the ultimate focus, and the ultimate choreography of every little tiny detail. That is what tends to guarantee the result. As opposed to concentrating and focusing on the end, you focus on the minute tasks, and guarantee that every one of them is done to perfection, that is the way you guarantee the good result.

And so, I did not let that pressure ever get to me. I am after perfection, the same as an Olympic athlete or ballet, and it's not the result that I focus on. And I think that's why the result was so good.

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