By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
On the heels of the last U.S. space shuttle landing yesterday, a piece of Russian space history has come to Princeton.
The Soyuz capsule that took a Montgomery resident to space and back will be on display at a local mall through the fall.
Gregory Olsen, president of Princeton-based GHO Ventures and the third private citizen to travel to space, has loaned his capsule, TMA-6, for display at the Market Fair Mall.
”I was given a gift by going into space,” he said. “I owe it to share my experience with as many people as possible. My real goal is to get as many American kids as I can into science and engineering, which is an uphill battle, but my motto is don’t give up.”
Mr. Olsen rode in the capsule to the International Space Station with a Russian astronaut and an American astronaut as the flight commander in October 2005.
Visitors can peer into bronze-colored squat capsule’s windows and see the electronics and three seats the crew rode in. Mr. Olsen’s seat the space participant’s seat is the one on the right of the very large window on the back.
The commander sits in the center seat and the flight engineer sits in the left seat.
”My basic job was to be quiet and not touch anything, but I was trained in safety and emergency procedures,” he said. “One of my jobs was if we had an air leak I was to open the oxygen valve and we rehearsed it many times. When the commander said ‘Olsen oxygen,’ he actually said it in Russian, I had to open the valve. We were too busy to be scared, I knew the leak was coming because I could see the pressure dropping (on the monitor).”
The black scorch marks on the outside of the capsule are scars from the re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
To get into space, it took 10 minutes to get into orbit and 34 orbits around the Earth for a total of two days in the capsule before docking with the International Space Station. Coming home only took three and a half hours.
”Coming down is easier, you basically just drop,” he said. “We undocked, did one and a half orbits and when we were over Argentina we entered the atmosphere.”
”It’s really super to have it here,” said Dick Tompkins of Hamilton, who was in the mall early on Wednesday to see the capsule. “I think space travel in itself is a fascination to all of us that grew up in the time when airplanes were hardly know, so all of this developed in my lifetime and its unbelievable that this could happen in my lifetime while I was around.”
Mr. Olsen has had a life-long interest in space.
”I was in seventh grade when Sputnik (the first Russian spacecraft) flew and that was my eye-opener,” he said. “I grew up in the space race.”
Obtaining the capsule was a challenge. It took Mr. Olsen “the better part of five years” to obtain the capsule after he landed in the desert in Kazakhstan. “After a lot of blood, sweat and tears I was able to procure it,” he said.
Calling the cost to obtain the capsule “complicated,” he declined to disclose the purchase price.
”It ain’t cheap,” he said.
He finally got the 3,000-pound in March of this year and stored it in one of his company’s warehouses in Jersey City until now.
”I thought the hard part would be getting this from Kazakhstan over here,” said Mr. Olsen, noting it was boxed and air shipped to the United States. “That turned out to be fairly straightforward. The hard part was getting all the insurance arranged, as you can imagine something like this requires a lot of insurance.”
The most important requirement in selecting a place for the capsule was easy public access and proximity to his home in Montgomery.
”I wanted it somewhere near where I am, myself and my family,” he said. “I walked in here in March and was like ‘this is it’ for so many reasons.”
He also chose Market Fair because he used to have two of his companies across the street.
”It’s kind of historical,” he said, since some of his sensors from his company were on the capsule he flew in.
After the capsule leaves the mall, it will be on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.
Now that he owns the capsule, he hopes to have a reunion with the crew either in Princeton or New York.
The capsule will be on display during regular mall hours until Oct. 18.