Story’s Texas Moon

Sound Beat

Story’s Texas Moon

Most anyone alive during the first lunar landing can tell you exactly where they were. For Dr. Story Musgrave it was a very special room in Houston.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

“I was assigned to a mission already but I was in Mission Control in the back of the room and just by luck, just by total luck, I am standing next to a person called Lewellyn Evans, Lewellyn but he went by Lew. Now this man is the CEO of Grumman. And so I am standing next to the CEO of the company that built this thing that just landed on the moon. So I said to Lew “Sir, let’s go out to the parking lot.” And we’re just walking around the parking lot and suddenly his peripheral vision catches the Moon up there and he looks up at the Moon and he says “Story Musgrave, do you understand that there are humans up on that thing up there?” I said “I understand that Lew, now we can go back to Mission Control.”

You’ve been listening to Under a Texas Moon by Ted Fiorito and his Orchestra, a Victor 78 from 1929.

Story was an NASA astronaut for over 30 years and flew on six spaceflights. He performed the first shuttle spacewalk on Challenger’s first flight, was a pilot on an astronomy mission, conducted two classified DOD missions, was the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Telescope repair mission and on his last flight, he operated an electronic chip manufacturing satellite on Columbia. Listen to our interview with him here