Musician-astronaut flies this year

With an ear for jazz and a head for numbers, FSU graduate Winston Scott is preparing for his first shuttle mission later this year.

The musician-turned-astronaut, who earned a bachelor of arts degree in music from FSU in 1972, joined NASA in 1992 after a distinguished career with the U.S. Navy.

He is scheduled to fly on the space shuttle in late November or December and conduct two spacewalks to test space station assembly methods and tools.

Scott developed an interest in engineering while he was studying music at FSU.

"My roommate was an engineering major and I can remember one night looking over his shoulder -- he was doing circuit analysis -- and something inside of me clicked; I knew that engineering was what I really wanted to do," said Scott, 45, who is married to FSU graduate Marilyn K. Robinson. They have two children.

Scott added calculus, physics and engineering to an already-full schedule of music classes and performance groups, then entered the Naval Aviation Officer Candidate School for graduate work. He earned a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1980 from the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, Calif.

In addition to playing the trumpet with a Houston-area band, Scott enjoys martial arts and flying airplanes.

"Flying in space is a dream come true; it really is," he said. -- Irene Klotz Brown