Cape Canaveral -- Story Musgrave is 61. He has flown in space five times. He is trim, muscular, as bald as a space helmet, a real-life version of Star Trek's Jean-Luc Picard.

He is a surgeon and a mechanic, a poet and a Madonna fan, a down-to-earth regular guy who believes in extraterrestrial life and tries to mind-meld with aliens during the missions.

On Friday, Musgrave returns to orbit--for the last time. He will be the oldest human ever to blast into space. He will be scared to death, as always, and he would have it no other way, as always.

"Space flight gets better all the time," Musgrave said. "On the first flight, your eyes are so big you can't hardly get them in your head. You take it all in. But the experience of space flight gets richer and richer. You get to see the subtleties. Looking at the Earth and looking at the heavens and experimenting with zero gravity or free fall. That itself involves all kinds of magic."

You have to believe in magic to believe in Musgrave, a true Renaissance man. He holds six college degrees and is working on two others at the University of Houston. At the same time, he is an ex-Marine who has logged 17,700 hours in cockpits and 500 parachute jumps.

At NASA, Musgrave is -- chronologically speaking -- an old man in a young person's business, but he also is the youthful heart and spiritual soul of the astronaut corps. Like a Hollywood star, Musgrave dominates every scene in which he appears. Inspecting the launch pad with the rest of his crew a few weeks ago, he was surrounded by an admiring ground crew. "You guys got the really hard job," he told them.

Musgrave has been an astronaut since 1967, when many of his four crew mates aboard this week's flight were still in grade school. Classified as a mission specialist rather than a shuttle pilot, he is the oldest active astronaut in a group of 102 men and women whose average age is 42.

But his prominence within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and his celebrity among space buffs rest much more than his longevity and superb physical condition. In a profession that celebrates important but bland technical skills, Musgrave is known to his colleagues as "Dr. Details," an obsessive planner and worker.

"You want to get the mission done, so you aim at perfection," Musgrave said. "You aim at perfecting your art of working in space."

To a degree unparalleled by any other astronaut, the soft-spoken Musgrave -- who says he is compared "all the time" to Captain Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation -- waxes poetic about the allure of space exploration. On the night before a launch, he slips away from the crew's temporary oceanfront quarters.

Celestial meditation

"I go down and I lie in the ocean and look at the stars and I see some satellites going overhead and I say: 'Tomorrow, you're going to be one of those. See that streak? That's you, tomorrow,'"

He and the rest of the crew aboard space shuttle Columbia are scheduled to blast off at 2:50 p.m. Friday on a 16-day scientific mission. Although Musgrave has more experience than most, he said he is terrified by the process of being catapulted by three million pounds of fuel into orbit 219 miles above Earth. "It's not pleasant," he said. "I'm scared to death."

But he tolerates it, because it gets him where he wants to be -- in space, where he senses a presence. Although he knows the odds are stacked against him, Musgrave tries to commune with alien beings during the missions. No contact yet, he said, though his poetry touches cosmic themes: "Starlets pierce my eyes; in my brain, fire flies. Periods of light, punctuate my night."

Led telescope repair

Three years ago, Musgrave attracted national attention as the lead spacewalker during the historic mission to repair the nearsighted Hubble Space Telescope. He planned much of that work himself, calling it the "choreography" of working in space. Colleagues say he knows more about spacewalks than anyone on the planet. "He certainly instills incredible confidence in us that every detail will have been analyzed," said Tamara Jernigan, a crew mate this time around who will walk in space. "We have a crew member who brings tremendous experience to our task. We certainly appreciate that very much."

During this mission, Musgrave will remain inside, coordinating the spacewalks from the shuttle. His bosses have told him that this is his final flight. It's not a matter of age, they said. Other astronauts just need a chance to develop their skills. Musgrave said he doesn't like being grounded, but he understands it. At any rate, he will remain active in the space community, either within NASA or outside as a teacher.

"There is a responsibility, because you are the one fortunate to be in space, to capture what space is all about," he said. "To get that experience and to bring it back home. To express it in terms that will bring space flight into the culture and that will guarantee that space flight will continue."

Here's a look at astronaut Story Musgrave, soon to become the oldest person ever in space: Personal: Born on a Massachusetts farm, now 61, 5-foot-10, 152 pounds, twice divorced, single, five children aged 9 to 35. Lives in colonial home two miles from the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Hobbies: Writing poems and short stories, taking college courses, feeding squirrels and birds in his back yard, watching taped performances of Madonna, collecting felt tip-pens. Career: Marine, electrician, pilot, parachutist, mathematician, surgeon, physiologist, astronaut. Space missions: On this flight, will tie American astronaut John Young's record of six space flights. Has logged 858 hours in space during five previous missions.