The University of Kentucky kicked off its E-Day engineering event this week with a keynote from an alumnus who’s worked on Earth and up in the stars.
Retired astronaut Story Musgrave spoke to a crowd of several hundred in UK’s Grand Ballroom. In his lecture, he discussed how he started as an aircraft mechanic in the Marine Corps, went on to study medicine, including a degree in physiology at UK, and eventually became the only NASA astronaut to fly on every space shuttle. When asked about advice for aspiring engineers, he said to look to ways to draw in other life experiences.
“Engineering, it’s what other disciplines are you going to bring in to supplement your engineering education, what other practical things, what other domains can you bring in to support your engineering domain, that can be really magical,” he said.
Musgrave credits his mechanics background for giving him a strong sense of systems analysis, which he said was invaluable in later endeavors, particularly leading the space walk which repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. Musgrave's entire lecture can be heard below, while information on the engineering open house can be found here.
