CAPE CANAVERAL - Steam trains were the fastest ride around when Story Musgrave was growing up on a Massachusetts dairy farm in the 1940s. Back then, he rarely crossed the county line.

Today - 50 years and five shuttle flights later - the 61-year-old astronaut is set to ride into space aboard shuttle Columbia on Tuesday. It will be his sixth trip into the heavens, matching the space flight record of only one other U.S. astronaut and setting a record of his own as the oldest person ever to leave the planet.

Chalk it up as one more thing that makes Story Musgrave stand out. From his shiny bald head to his heartfelt belief in alien civilizations, the astronaut is a rarity: a free-thinker, a soft-spoken philosopher, and a big-picture man who dreams and acts with equal enormity.

"He's an inspirational person," said Todd Musgrave, 31, one of Musgrave's five children. "It's inspiring to know that someone really close to you is doing so much." Todd Musgrave describes his dad as a "Renaissance man, a romantic, extremely knowledgeable," and, "an odd duck."

The description sticks. A surgeon with six academic degrees and counting, Musgrave goes to classes the way others go to the movies. For fun, he skydives - with 612 jumps to his credit - dabbles in literary criticism, and enjoys scuba diving, running, chess and photography.

He goes no where without a book.

"I take exams, I write theses," Musgrave says. "I think it's like anything else: If you've got challenges, if you've got demands, you live up to them. The mind is just like a muscle, it has to be active.

Though it will lack the glued-to-your-TV glamour of his last mission - the 1993 shuttle flight that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope - Musgrave says this voyage will have its own magic.

During Columbia's 16-day jaunt, the astronauts are to release two satellites and later retrieve them to bring back to Earth. Two of Musgrave's fellow astronauts also will conduct a pair of spacewalks. Musgrave, who has taken four strolls in space, will assist the space walkers from inside Columbia and keep track of one satellite. He also has a personal list of about 100 things to do because this will be his last dance in orbit.

NASA officials have told Musgrave that he will not fly again so intends to make the most of his time. For example, he will use a map to identify places on Earth so he can think about their culture as he photographs them from space. Oh, yes, he also will look for signs of alien life. Musgrave says he does this by simply "being aware" that other living things are out there. While he puts his chances of making contact at less than one in a trillion, he'll keep his mind open. Others may think this strange, Musgrave says, but soon they will come around, just as people once adjusted to a round Earth.

"There's got to be the same kind of evolution in thinking," Musgrave says. "Very shortly now, people will accept the presence of other living forms out there, even if they don't have scientific evidence in front of them, because they will perceive how logical it is."

Musgrave's own life has been marked with leaps of different sorts. He started as a boy on a 1,000-acre farm where he began driving tractors at age five and fixing them soon after. He remembers lying on his back in the fields, marvelling at the stars. Between the tools and the land, he built up a familiarity with technology and an appreciation for the universe around him. But it would take time to find his calling.

Spaceflight would have to be invented. In 1953, Musgrave joined the Marines but couldn't become a pilot because he had not finished high school. It was the last time he would fall short academically. Five back-to-back degrees followed his military service. First there was a bachelor's degree in mathematics and statistics from Syracuse University and a short stint at Eastman Kodak Co. in Rochester, N.Y. Then he studied computers and business in California at UCLA. He was a student in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to be sent into orbit. The space race was on, but NASA only wanted test pilots for its first astronauts so Musgrave went on his academic way.

He added a degree in chemistry from Marietta College in Ohio before heading to medical school at Columbia University in New York where he was trained in surgery. Another diploma followed in physiology and biophysics from the University of Kentucky.

By 1967, NASA had opened its doors to non-pilot scientists in the astronaut corps, and Musgrave walked through. The agency's glorious Apollo days were in full swing, and Musgrave was awash in anticipation. He hoped for a trip to the moon and expected NASA soon would set a course for Mars. Neither journey happened, but Musgrave didn't mind. He immersed himself in space work, helping design the Skylab program in the mid-70s and the spacesuits and equipment needed by astronauts on spacewalks.

His initial flight came in 1983 on the maiden voyage of shuttle Challenger, where he took the first spacewalk from a shuttle along with astronaut Donald Peterson. Three more shuttle trips followed, and Musgrave jumped into each with so much enthusiasm that it sometimes proved overwhelming to his comrades.

"I remember one time during simulation training, I had to take him aside and say, 'Story, you've got to cool it because no one else has a chance to learn anything - you've already got it done,'" said former astronaut Gordon Fullerton, who served as Musgrave's commander on a 1985 Challenger flight.

"Then, after launch, the (shuttle's main) engines had hardly cut-off and he's out of his seat, charging around." A master planner, Musgrave never wasted a minute of time on Earth either.

"He wouldn't go to lunch like the rest of us - he'd be off somewhere for his 10-mile run," said Roger Zwieg, a NASA research pilot and long-time friend and flying partner.

Also unlike the others - who at their most nutritious would store boxes of raisins or granola bars in their desks - Musgrave kept a jar of wheat within his reach. That's right, wheat - straight out of the fields.

"I used to say, `Man, are you going to eat that stuff?' and he'd say, `Why not?' " Zwieg said. The two men met back in 1969 when Zwieg was a flight instructor and Musgrave was a student at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas. The military pilot training was required stuff back then for astronauts. Musgrave finished first in his class. He has been flying ever since, logging more than 17,000 hours in 160 different types of aircraft.

Many hours were spent making the 1-hour-40 minute flight from Houston to Denver in a T-38 jet so he could work a couple days a month at Denver General Hospital. He did it to "keep his hand in medicine," working as a trauma surgeon, plucking bullets out of flesh, stitching knife wounds, helping pull teeth or deliver babies, he says. The end of his surgery days would coincide with the piece-de-resistance of his career: NASA's 1993 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

As the lead spacewalker for the high-stakes mission, Musgrave spent hundreds of hours training for the flight and helped develop many of the techniques needed to pull it off. During one session in June 1993, the chilling temperatures of his simulation chamber ate through his gloves and mild frostbite injured the fingers of his right hand. He recovered, but he could never operate again.

It was just like Musgrave to give his all to the flight. But then, the Hubble mission needed his all. The $2-billion telescope was a scientific debacle thanks to a manufacturing mistake that made its main mirror as blind as a bat. A beleaguered NASA was squirming with embarrassment. A successful repair mission could redeem the agency. It would take a record-setting five spacewalks during the flight to install the necessary corrective optics packages - some as big as a telephone booth - in the telescope. Musgrave would perform three of the walks with astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman. He executed the work with the care of a master painter.

"He went about his task on Hubble not as a mechanic, but as an artist," said Milt Heflin, who served as lead flight director for the mission and now as deputy manager of NASA's spacewalk project office in Houston.

"He didn't just go up there and slap the paint on, he gently touched it to the canvas. He brought a gentleness to the job. He was one who recognized, in the presence of zero gravity in space, even large objects can be handled with fingertips."

Feeling the pressure, Musgrave delved into the mission until he had each move memorized.

"I choreographed every single nut and bolt, every work site, every screw, every everything - how you hold a wrench," Musgrave says. "It was basically like a ballet, where I knew where every finger and every toe was to be for five days - where all 300 tools were in my head. It was a very rich experience for me. I could really see my art in that."

The crew came back successful, and Musgrave skyrocketed to Picasso status. He appeared on "Nightline" with Ted Koppel and the "Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. His bald head made him instantly recognizable, and people stopped him on the streets of New York City. Back in Houston, he couldn't get his Christmas shopping done. Everyone wanted to talk with the man who helped fix Hubble. To this day, they still want to chat.

"Some just say `Hi Story,' " says Musgrave, running his hands over his softly creased forehead and smooth scalp. "Some say, `What's it like up there Story?'". He talks with every one of them because, he says, astronauts must share their experiences.

"Space flight is going to play a very important role in lifting people to a much higher level," he says. "They will not be worried about trivial ethnic and racial differences. They're going to think on a much higher plane.

"The more you start thinking of yourself as a cosmic creature and part of this thing that is unfolding, trivial differences are not going to mean anything, and we're going to become a much greater species than we are."

After the Columbia mission, Musgrave will go into the books with astronaut John Young as the most experienced space travellers of their time.

Young, 66, flew six times during NASA's Gemini, Apollo and shuttle programs. Musgrave will be the first to have flown on six shuttle missions.

Although limited to Earth from now on, Musgrave expects to find new challenges. A continual student, he earned a sixth degree - a master's in literature in 1987 - and currently is working on master's degrees in psychology and history.

Married and divorced twice, Musgrave lives alone outside Houston although he may want to flee the "vanilla living" of the suburbs for the color and culture of the city, he says.

Teaching is a possibility, although he also has asked NASA to consider a new spot for him once his astronaut career is over. He is not gloomy about the end of his flying days.

"Space has been my calling. Whether I flew one flight or 10, I've had the privilege of being in space and working in the space business for 30 years, and I think that's the important thing," Musgrave says.

"I do feel exceedingly rewarded and privileged right now."