Take your audience on a galactic journey with Story
Musgrave, a NASA veteran of six space shuttle missions
who explains that mankind has always looked to the
heavens for answers of life on Earth

SM: It's so self-evident to me, I don't even know what to say. I don't hardly know how to put it. There are people who take consciousness out of the natural world. They speak about it as if it's a paradigm, off by itself--as if it's beyond our bodily, earthly self. I don't do that. I look upon consciousness as a natural phenomenon, not supernatural and not "out there." It's here. That does not mean it can't have extraordinary, unbelievable powers. But for me consciousness is not supernatural. For me religions are not supernatural. For me the whole darn thing is natural. That's the answer! Consciousness is natural. It's the naturalness that makes science and spirit, cosmology, theology, astronomy, the whole thing. For me in cosmic evolution it is the cosmos that evolution produced. Not only the physical world, it produced the spiritual world and the conscious world. We have these huge arguments about science and spirit, people try to put the two together. What do you mean get together? The same cosmos formed them both and they exist in the same cosmos.

Have you seen or do you believe in the existence of UFOs or other signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life?

I believe, and scientifically I am certain, that there are endless other living forms out there, including intelligent sentient beings. With the size of the Universe that we have, the billions of galaxies, the distances and scales, and the billions of years that things have been around, of course there are other living forms out there, and of course there are other intelligent forms. It is anthrocentric thinking to believe that we are the only ones

In terms of personally seeing any kind of evidence, I have seen glorious things out there, but I have never seen anything which I consider having the signature of life or an intelligent being. I see little pieces of ice, sparklets, that dance out there and go away from you as they rotate in the sunlight in linear fashion. They turn on and off like little fireflies in space. I also have seen what I call "Story's Snake" out there. I do not know how large this object is because I do not know how far away it was, but twice I have seen it. It has internal motions, almost like a very flexible rubber hose, but you can see it just swimming out there like an eel. This is all part of the debris the shuttle puts off as soon as the main engines shutdown. Sometimes, you also see meteorites flying under you, the falling stars, they do not come in above, they come underneath you between the shuttle and Earth. There are all kinds of glorious light shows and 'Fourth of July's' out there, but I have never, myself, seen anything which had the signature of life. Although, as I have said, I know there are entire universes of living forms out there

"I have never seen anything which I consider having the signature of life or an intelligent being." (quote from Dr. Story Musgrave)"