Gregory Olsen tells his story before Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce
By: David Campbell
PLAINSBORO Gregory Olsen, the millionaire scientist who earned a place in the history books in October when he became the third non-astronaut to visit the International Space Station, said in a talk Thursday that his fascination with space travel goes back to his childhood.
Mr. Olsen gave his presentation at a luncheon of the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce held at the Doral Forrestal Conference Center and Spa.
During his talk, he said he remembers as a kid hearing about Sputnik during the Cold War in the 1950s, when the Soviets successfully launched the first satellite into orbit, and the space race that followed.
Things sort of came full circle for him in October, when he was launched into space himself from the same launch pad used by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who in 1961 became the first human to travel into space.
Mr. Olsen is founder of West Windsor-based Sensors Unlimited, a developer and manufacturer of optoelectronic devices for fiber-optic communications systems, photonic and near infrared imaging devices.
Arlington, Va.-based agency Space Adventures brokered Mr. Olsen’s $20 million trip into space, which lasted 10 days.
On Oct. 1, the Russian Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft carrying Mr. Olsen, NASA astronaut William McArthur and cosmonaut Valery Takarev launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
It took the craft two days to catch up to the International Space Station in space. Once aboard the station, Mr. Olsen spent eight days conducting scientific and photography experiments under a commercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency.
He is the third civilian to be launched to the station under contract with Space Adventures, following American businessman Dennis Tito in 2001 and South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth in 2002.
Mr. Olsen said his own journey into space began on a day in June 2003 when he was in Starbucks reading a story in The New York Times about Mr. Tito and Mr. Shuttleworth.
"It got me thinking maybe this is something I could do," he said Thursday.
The term "space tourist," often used in the media to describe him, is one he said he objects to. "It implies you write a check and that’s it," he said.
In fact, Mr. Olsen said, he underwent more than 900 hours of training, including rigorous physical training, Russian-language lessons, International Space Station systems and survival training, and also had to pass a final exam. "I got into the best shape I was in since high school," he said.
Mr. Olsen had resumed space-flight training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, in May after a medical condition derailed his training almost a year prior.
He said this setback was devastating, but said he refused to give up and eventually convinced the Russian doctors to let him re-enter the program.
"At that time I was bitter," he said. "I was down, I was angry, but I didn’t give up. And we finally wore the Russian doctors down."
He said he and his fellow crewmembers were called "space cowboys," because "we were by far the oldest cosmonauts cumulatively."
Mr. Olsen described training in a Russian plane that traveled in free fall to let them practice in zero gravity, which they fondly called the "vomit comet." He noted that roughly 40 percent of all people suffer from motion sickness, but that he is not one of them.
He said people often ask him what it was like going up in the rocket. "People ask me how I felt I felt great going up," he said. But he also said the gravitational effect of liftoff "felt like three people sitting on your lap."
Mr. Olsen described Earth as seen from space as "the same color blue of the sky that you look up into," and said the planet looked "so pretty and so fragile."
A highlight of his time on the space station was weightlessness. He described "floating in the air and just feeling so lucky to be up there."
Would he travel in space again?
"In a heartbeat," he said Thursday.
Mr. Olsen said he is now visiting schools, with an emphasis on inner-city schools, giving talks about his journey in the hope of inspiring youngsters’ interest in science and engineering. He said his hopes his journey will inspire others to pursue their dreams no matter what.
"What I learned from this is don’t give up," Mr. Olsen said.