Tourist details space station adventure

By: Dick Brinster
   HIGHTSTOWN — Space traveler Gregory Olsen wants young schoolchildren to remember that perseverance often is the key to success, and the only reason he was able to leave the Earth.
   "Never give up on your dream," he told 80 third-grade students during a presentation this month of the ride he took to the International Space Station in 2005. "It doesn’t matter if you want to be a musician, an actress or go into space."
   That’s not bad advice from a source who says he failed trigonometry in high school, then graduated magna cum laude with multiple degrees from Fairleigh Dickinson University before later earning a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.
   Mr. Olsen, a former East Windsor resident and co-founder of Sensors Unlimited Inc., an electronics development company in West Windsor, eventually became the third fare-paying civilian to be launched into space aboard a Russian rocket. But the 61-year-old businessman who paid $20 million to fly on a Soyuz mission, also had to "hang in there" after a medical concern grounded him for nine months.
   "I was really bummed out over that. I was devastated," he said Dec. 8 at Grace Norton Rogers School. "But if I had given up, I never would have flown."
   After an X-ray detected a spot on his chest, the Russians said he would not be allowed to go. But the spot later cleared up, permitting Mr. Olsen to spend eight days in the space station 200 miles above the earth.
   It was fulfillment of a dream that began when he was in the seventh grade.
   "A teacher told us that Russia was way ahead of us in space, and we were afraid they would beat us at everything." he said. "Three years ago, when I heard it was possible for private people to go into space, I decided to do it."
   So, on Oct. 1, 2005, Mr. Olsen climbed into a Soyuz spaceship with a Russian cosmonaut and American astronaut in Star City, Russia. They orbited the planet for two days before linking up with the space station.
   With the children oohing and aahing as they watched a replay of the launch and viewed slide photos of the mission, Mr. Olsen explained that the ride wasn’t always so enjoyable. One of the photos showed Mr. Olsen, cosmonaut Valery Tokarev and astronaut Bill McArthur squeezed into the capsule en route to the far-less-cumbersome space station.
   "We had to stay in that position for 2½ hours before the launch and for 4½ hours after," Mr. Olsen said.
   That resulted in a question virtually anyone might have at such a point.
   "We didn’t have any toilet facilities, so we all wore Huggies," he said.
   The children roared as they watched Mr. Olsen eat and drink in space. The consumption of liquids is especially interesting to watch, with each mouthful floating in a bubble as the recipient adjusts his mouth to catch them.
   Some of the dehydrated food that must be consumed isn’t bad, Mr. Olsen insisted.
   "My favorite is NASA shrimp cocktail," he said. "I’ve had worse in New Jersey."
   After witnessing the inconveniences of space travel, student Hunter Jackman-Hulick marveled at the hurdles Mr. Gregory had to clear to make his dream a reality.
   "I’m not really sure I’d want to go," said Hunter, a student in Jan Amenhauser’s class. "But I really like a lot of space ships."
   Mr. Olsen, a resident of a Montgomery who grew up in Ridgefield Park, didn’t forget the earthbound students from his temporary home in space thanks to a ham radio.
   "I spoke with Princeton High School, a high school in Brooklyn and Ridgefield Park High School," he said.
   Those students also wanted to know how seemingly mundane tasks are performed in space.
   "People ask me all the time, ‘How do you take a shower in space?’ The answer is you don’t," Mr. Olsen said. "You wipe yourself off with Wet Wipes."
   One great convenience of space travel, however, is the ability to sleep.
   "How do you do that? Any way you want," he said. "You don’t need a pillow because your head doesn’t weigh anything, but you need to tie yourself to something."
   Mr. Olsen was disappointed when the digital camera he took with him was lost somewhere in the space capsule.
   "It just floated away," he explained. "That’s why they have zippers everywhere on a space suit."
   After his return to Earth, with a landing Oct. 10 on a steppe in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, Mr. Olsen got the good news that Mr. McArthur found the elusive camera and downloaded the images from space.
   Mr. Olsen was asked what would happen if he had an opportunity to go to the moon.
   "I’d be there," he said.
   So would Jay Vaingankar, another student of Ms. Amenhauser.
   "I think it would be cool," he said. "Yes, I’d go, because taking the risk could really make me famous."