CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
13 January 2011
Events News
Former NASA Astronaut to Speak at ESPRIT World Conference 2011
Earmarked for the spotlight as keynote speaker at ESPRIT World Conference 2011, Story Musgrave may not be a guru, but he is assuredly a mentor.
Yes, his first name is Story.
Over lonely miles of telephone line, Musgrave’s steady drawl spans the gap between the Golden and Sunshine states.
A master of reinvention, the adventurous boy raised on a small dairy farm became a Marine, a surgeon, and an astronaut with seven graduate degrees — which happens to match the number of his brood. That’s right: Today, Musgrave is father to seven children between the ages of 4 and 50, and grandfather to three.
On the Sunshine end, he switches from teasing the 4-year-old daughter who shares his name to answering the questions streaming into his ear with the verbal dexterity of an auctioneer and the patience of a monk.
His is the even drawl of a man with all the time in the world and, judging by the number of professions and interests he’s crammed skillfully into the past 75 years, this appears to be the case.
Oh, and at he was also head spacewalker on the mission to repair the Hubble telescope.
DP Technology took the opportunity to pick Musgrave’s busy brain for a preview of what to expect when the ESPRIT World Conference goes to Florida in May.
What we discovered is that 33 minutes on the phone with Musgrave is not nearly enough time.
DP: You have said that all the things you have done are, in one way or another, linked and everything boils down to being a farm kid who liked to go out and explore. Will you explain that?
SM: It was nature and mechanics. My love of nature and being out there in the earliest of days, when I was really impressionable … I took in nature when I was exceedingly young and it became a part of me, as did machinery.
The story goes from being on a farm and working with farm machinery to being a mechanic in the Marine Corps and on to Hubble — and that’s a nice storyline, but it’s also real.
It’s all linked … I can see how things work and I can understand how they’re not going to work in the future, and that’s led to my designing of things. It’s mechanical and geometrical intuition.
DP: You have also talked about how being mindful, or living in the present, is important.
SM: Being mindful is incredibly important. It’s about focusing and also about being able to put your imagination on things so that you’re not just looking at the facts, the FAQ of things. Then you are able to manipulate them in your imagination as to what they might be, what they could be and where they come from — so as opposed to just facts, you put imagination on things. You tell a story about them. They have a story.
DP: What is your take on the present and the past in terms of how our attitudes about them effect our lives?
SM: Well, if you like your present, then you like your past. It’s somewhat philosophical, but if you have hope for your future, it’s somewhat logical that you must have appreciated your past history because it’s what got you here.
DP: What would you say to someone who does not like their present?
SM: Then, G-damn it, change it. I’m sorry for the language, but I really mean that. If you don’t like what you’ve got, have the courage to leap off the cliff, sprout some wings on the way down and just do it. You cannot go through life doing things you’re not passionate about. Have the courage to change. I am reinventing myself at 75, so someone else can reinvent themselves at 30 …
Find your passion, find your heart and find out what you’re good at, what comes easily. People say, “Well, I’m weak at this I need to strengthen up.” Just don’t bother with it. You will make a difference in the world by working on your strengths …
You aren’t being cowardly and you will make a bigger difference in the world if you push the easy path to perfection. You’ll be able to push it higher.
DP: So you believe that pursuing what makes us unhappy is a waste of time — and that unhappiness in and of itself is also a waste of time?
SM: Life is too short to do the ugly. It’s just too short. People don’t understand that there’s a choice involved and they get stuck.
You have a lot of baggage and you want to keep going forward but it drags you down. It’s sick stuff, negative, and you can’t go beyond it. You’re stuck in the past, in bad stuff. Going forward means going forward with a clean slate. There is a huge range of ability to go forward or not go forward.
Being grateful is also very important … When sh-t happens, you can blow up over it or you can look at it and say, “Well, that’s really unimportant. Two weeks from now, am I even going to remember this little thing?”
DP: Were you always this way, or did you have to cultivate that?
SM: I have to work on that. I have to consciously look at this hit that I took and say, “Who cares?” You know? In the big scheme of things, it is not going to matter. Like any other evil thought, if I don’t work on it, it will bug me.
DP: What overall message will you deliver to the attendees of ESPRIT World Conference 2011?
SM: It works on a lot of different levels and has a lot of different lessons — but the positivity and the optimism are there. It shows them possibilities and so it’s nice that way, too, but it’s also a story about going from being a farm kid to fixing the telescope.
It’s not the advanced degrees that got me there.
Well, there you have it — 33 short minutes in the mind of Story Musgrave, master of reinvention. Check out his presentation at ESPRIT World Conference 2011. For more information, visit www.regonline.com/ewc2011.
Author Stacey Wiebe is public relations coordinator for DP Technology Corp
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