ANNOUNCER: December 7th, 1993.

KOPPEL: A spectacular voyage, an ambitious mission -- the whole world watches as the shuttle astronauts try to save the $1.5-billion Hubble telescope. Tonight, an exclusive interview from space.

ANNOUNCER: This is ABC News Nightline. Reporting from Washington, Ted Koppel.

KOPPEL: It is probably ungracious to look a gift interview in the mouth, but here's the issue. You've got a $1.5-billion observatory in space that isn't working the way it's supposed to. You have sent a $690-million mission into space to fix the malfunctioning telescope. You are just about an hour away from sending two of your astronauts out of the spacecraft again to perform the most delicate and incredibly important repairs. The future of NASA and the American space program hangs in the balance. So what do you do? You make one of your most experienced astronauts up there aboard the Endeavor available late Tuesday night for an interview on Nightline. Surely, Dr. Story Musgrave, astronaut, surgeon, ex-Marine and literary critic, could be finding something more useful to do. Well, yes and no. This isn't quite the make-it-or-break-it mission for NASA that has been portrayed, but pretty close. Those running the space agency probably remember that every one of those first astronauts back in the early '60s was perceived as bigger than life. Those earlier heroes generated public support and money. NASA could use both of those right now. So, from 370 miles above the Earth, aboard the space shuttle Endeavor, meet Dr. Story Musgrave. And good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever it is up there. Give us a sense of your surroundings there, would you, Story?

MUSGRAVE: Sense of surroundings, sir? Well, first of all, you've got to look at Earth, about 370 miles, you can see about 700 miles to 1000 miles away from you, looking at our home down there. I think that's the first perspective. And surrounding us is an incredible amount of technology, both in the bay, the kind of instruments and things we are fixing on Hubble, but also just looking around at the shuttle vehicle we have here. I think it's a combination of nature and technology.

KOPPEL: You and your colleagues up there must be aware of what I was referring to in the introduction, namely that if this thing works as well as it's been going so far, you may be breathing a whole new vitality into the American space program.

MUSGRAVE: Well, yes, sir, we're doing that, and of course, every mission is critical. We're doing the best we can on this one. I think this one is very important because an instrument like Hubble, a very, very powerful instrument, an instrument that conceptually cannot only give us great science, but also give us a sense of what is our place in the universe. I think that's why it touches people all the way down to elementary schools kids. I think that is why it's so important, because it touches all humanity.

KOPPEL: When we come back, the rest of our interview from space with Endeavor astronaut Story Musgrave.

[commercial break]

KOPPEL: And now we're going to continue with the interview that we recorded about two hours ago with Endeavor astronaut Story Musgrave. Even though the interview was shot a couple of hours ago, you will be seeing live photographs from the space shuttle Endeavor.

KOPPEL: You have practiced every one of these maneuvers literally thousands of times, and you've gone into those water tanks to practice it. What was different about it when you were shoving that piano-sized camera into the -- into the craft, into the Hubble, yesterday?

MUSGRAVE: Yes, we practiced for hundreds and hundreds of hours. We tried to identify every type of surprise we might run into. I've been running scared, really, ever since I got assigned to this mission, and the key thing was surprise. We are on a pioneering effort, we are an incredibly ambitious effort. NASA is always in a pioneering world. We are in a strange place that we're still getting to know, and so all the tasks that we've done so far, there have been surprises. We have not practiced everything. We (unintelligible) and I don't think we planned to do. We practiced for identified contingencies, but also we tried to be generically good enough with our tools and our skills out there so that we could accommodate surprise. So essentially, everything we've done has been a little different then the choreography, that kind of ballet that we practiced in the water tank.

KOPPEL: Let me ask you what may seem like a stupid question, but when you're up there and you're working for hours at a time, there must be times when you work up a sweat, when you need to wipe sweat out of your eyes. How do you do that?

MUSGRAVE: We have a liquid-cooled garment, sir, in which your total body, from your ankles on up to your wrists, is covered with tubes, and you are the temperature of the water in those tubes, and it (unintelligible) purpose, the same as the thermostat in your home, how hot or how cold you'd like to run. I tend to run fairly cold, so I inhibit a lot of sweat. We do not get physical sweat. You may get just some moisture on your face, but you never do accumulate drops. You run the temperature in your liquid-cooled garment, which is very powerful, down to even 38 degrees. You adjust that so you will not get drops of sweat.

KOPPEL: What is going to happen --

MUSGRAVE: And another interesting thing, so you don't fog the visor, we put some soap, we rub a very thin film of soap on it so we don't fog the visor. Those are interesting questions, sir.

KOPPEL: When your colleagues now go out on their EVA -- and they're going out, I guess, in about an hour -- they will be out there while we are on the air live, just a couple of hours from now. What is it they are going to be doing, and how critical it that? In other words, how much remains to be done on this mission?

MUSGRAVE: There's a whole bunch that remains to be done. What we have done has turned out very successful. We're three for three on three days. We got what done -- what the plan was. We have two more very important days, but I think even way beyond that, I certainly will not relax until six weeks or two months from now when we see how the solar arrays perform, we see how the (unintelligible) perform, we start getting optical images back from all the instruments and see if the aberration is corrected, only at that time will I kind of relax and think that we have gotten the job done.

KOPPEL: Story, you are a literary man as well as a scientist and a former Marine. Fall back for a moment on your literary background to give me a sense of what it feels like to be involved in a project like this which may answer questions that have bothered and plagued mankind since the beginning of time.

MUSGRAVE: The interest in literature and the humanities is to try to put this all in perspective, to try to look on my 25 years as an astronaut, to try to look at the privilege. You know, there's millions of people that could be up here and doing exactly what I'm doing. And so my interest in there is, in terms of literature and philosophy, is to try to catch -- not only to do these kinds of things, but what is the meaning of it, what is the meaning of it to humanity? How do you put it in perspective? How do you come up here and have a great experience? You know, it's like Thoreau going to the woods, it's a new experience into nature. It's like the American renaissance, the whole bunch, the Moby Dicks. You can think of Moby Dick and his quest. You can think about the mission you're on, the kind of quest you're on here today. So all of these things come together. But the principle thing is not only go do it, but to put perspective on it and to give it to other people, other people that could be here as well as you.

KOPPEL: In terms of how all of you get along up there together, what do you think the pressures are going to be on people in space when, ultimately, they spend months, even years, in space together, in relatively cramped quarters?

MUSGRAVE: Well, this team here would love to spend years in space together. It's working together and it's having -- it's being a good human and it's being a good professional. That's what makes things happen. If you've got little differences, you've got to transcend them to get the job done and to, you know, to have good group dynamics. You've got to, if you have little differences, and all groups do, it's a myth that all of us are, you know, totally compatible. That's not so. We are a group of people who have been thrown together, and we make things work and we have a good time doing it. But this particular team, we'd love to be up for years.

KOPPEL: The interview you're watching was recorded just about two hours ago, but some of the video you're seeing is coming to us live from the spacecraft Endeavor. More of both when we come back.

[commercial break]

KOPPEL: Story, people have answered this question before from up there. It's sort of unique to be able to ask you while you are in space, as you look back on the Earth, any particular perspective? Answer that from any way that you would like to, either philosophically or politically, or militarily.

MUSGRAVE: I love space, for all kinds of reasons. For myself, and I'm being personal, it's a new relationship to nature and the universe. To look at Earth from this perspective, to look at the contrast of colors, to look at our home, to look at a place where, unless you use a telephoto lens or high-powered binoculars, you really don't see national boundaries. You get a new perspective from your home from a distance, it's against that deep dark background, and you say, "Wow, that really is a beautiful place." The contrast, the colors are incredible. (unintelligible) you go round and round the Earth and you can spend an hour and a half just looking at it all from space, the cloud patterns. You look at the universe out there, the brightness of the stars, the planets, the speeds, the sunsets, all that kind of thing. Space is kind of magical, because we have evolved and we have been designed by having that force between us and gravity, and now so in an evolutionary sense, here we are kind of floating around and we really weren't designed to be floating around, so that gives it a really kind of mystical, magical environment. I think those are the two critical things, what you look at with your eyes out there, the universe, the heavens, looking at the Earth as one home, without national boundaries, thinking about the global whole, thinking about all of humanity and its relationship to the universe. I probably took too much time.

KOPPEL: Not at all. I have only time, though, for one more question, I think, and please answer this at whatever length you like. As we look at what you're doing up there, there are still people down here on Earth who are saying why, why go to the trouble, why go to the expense, why endanger lives to do what you're doing?

MUSGRAVE: We have no choice, sir. It's the nature of humanity. It's the nature of life. The globe was created and life evolved, and you look at every single cubic millimeter on this Earth. You can go 30,000 feet down below the Earth's surface, you can go 40,000 feet up in the air and life is there. When you look at the globe down there, you see teeming life everywhere. It's the power of life. And maybe I'm not just a human up here, you know. Now life is leaping off the planet. It's heading or other parts of the solar system, other parts in the universe. There are those kinds of pressures. It isn't simply politics, it isn't simply technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it's sort of also -- you could look at it as maybe the essence of life. I think Teilhard de Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those kind of forces are at work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and to push on. Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is a penalty, there is a down side, but exploration and pioneering, I think those are the critical things, it's the essence of what human beings are, and that is to try to understand their universe and to try to participate in the entire universe and not just their little neighborhood.

KOPPEL: Story Musgrave, I think NASA knew what they were doing when they allowed you to give us 15 minutes of your valuable time up there. Please extend our very best to your colleagues, and good luck on the rest of your mission. Thank you so much.