Twenty years ago I had the good fortune to land a job at a think tank in Los Angeles. I worked with old friends from the Robot Wars and Battlebots days and as well, some interesting people.
Most were pioneers in the computer industry. All were beyond smart and accomplished. Like this fellow who sat across from my desk with some of the most staggering credentials in the entire US space program1.
Story and I walked up the street one day to have hamburgers. He told me a bit about how he ended up in NASA.
He grew up on a farm with an abusive father and would escape to a crop field, stare at the stars and imagine a brighter future. When I was a youth pastor I read a book which stated the #1 question junior high boys have is not theological but “Do you like me?” To be a young man, figuring yourself out, and to not feel liked is crushing. Turns out that pretty much applies to both sexes at all ages.
I’ve written previously that in antiquity there was the concept of three heavens: the sky with birds, then space with stars and finally an unrealized realm of perfection and ideas devoid of material form. Back then there were no screens or social media to sap our time. People studied nature and the sky as it was literally elevated ‒ and mysterious since it was unreachable. The place where ideas took form; a goal unto itself.
However!
The very contemplation of ideas is foundationally important to man. You and I don’t need to solve everything but the exercise is one of the things God created us to do. The list of accomplishments of Story is absolutely staggering, a man who applied himself.
But they all started in the mind of a young man with wide hope, while mired in grinding circumstances.
When things become difficult in our lives we must remember to look up with hope.
P.S.
I’ve had this mission patch since the 1980s, now its on the wall of my shop. I would never have guessed…
“…he is the most formally educated astronaut with six academic degrees. Musgrave is the only astronaut to have flown aboard all five Space Shuttles.”