Students Get a Down-to-Earth Visit with an Astronaut

Greg Olsen spent a lot of time just floating around. He’d float through the halls, and while sleeping. He’d float while eating, and working on the computer. Sometimes, he’s just float in one spot, doing mid-air summersaults.

Greg Olsen doesn’t have any special powers, and isn’t an alien from another planet. However, he has been to space and spent a week aboard the International Space Station in 2005, which is where he did most, if not all, of his floating.

“I flew there on the Russian Soyuz rocket as a private citizen, it’s the only way to get to space now,” Olsen told a group of students at the last week. “But the hardest part was learning Russian.”

Olsen visited the school last week to share his adventures, and to inspire and encourage the children there to consider careers in science and engineering.

“Just because something is hard, don’t give up. That’s the secret of life,” he told the students.

After training for five months at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, he launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket TMA-7 on Oct. 1, 2005 with Cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev and Astronaut Bill McArthur. He docked to the ISS on Oct. 3, and returned to earth on Soyuz TMA-6 on Oct. 11.

But before that Olsen, spent much of his career as a research scientist and entrepreneur and is now president of GHO Ventures in Princeton, where he manages his investments—including a South African winery, Montana ranch, and does numerous speaking engagements to encourage children to consider careers in science and engineering. He worked as a research scientist at RCA Labs (Sarnoff Center) from 1972 to 1983 and  worked with optoelectronic devices, including laser diodes and photo detectors for fiber optic applications. He was awarded 12 patents, wrote more than 100 technical papers, co-authored several books, including “By Any Means Necessary,” spends a lot of his time visiting with students and others to share his story. In 1990, he sold a company he co-founded, EPITAXX, for $12 million, then founded Unlimited in 1992 before selling that for $600 million.

For the folks at Solomon Schecter, he was the perfect guest. Rabbi Stuart Saposh said the visit is indicative of the school’s interdisciplinary approach to the sciences (Called STEM, for science, technology, engineering and math), which encourages hands on experiences and experiments, such as having students design their own paper gliders then test them by using computer software and then, by throwing them.

"The visit was in actuality a natural extension  and closely connected to our space curriculum and so the students were well prepared for his remarks and asked many insightful questions for Dr. Olsen,” said Rabbi Saposh, the head of the school.

“What if you get sick,” asked one student.

Olsen told students that 40 percent of people get “space sick,” but if there was something serious, it would be difficult to treat the patient.

“If you get very sick, like if you have a heart attack, there’s not a lot you can do, so they tell you to get healthy before you go up.”

Most of the students were interested in what life is like in outer space, and wondered how Olsen ate, drank, slept, and exercised, and with a slide show and engaging personality, Olsen was ready with answers.

“I floated in space for 10 days. This is what I did, and I loved every minute of it,” he said.

He told students how astronauts needed to be tied down when they sleep so they don’t float through the room, and he showed them video of how water floats like bubbles into an astronaut’s mouth for drinking.

“There’s no need for socks in an weightless environment,” he told the giggling students.

He also shared what his actual role was on the station, other than tourist.

“I was a scientific experiment,” he said. “I was part of a motion sickness experiment, and they used me as a guinea pig. One thing I did a lot of was take pictures of the earth.”