Space passenger Olsen to pull his own weight

Alan Boyle Science editor • Profile • E-mail

STAR CITY, Russia - Space passenger Greg Olsen may be paying $20 million for a ride to the international space station next month, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get out of doing the chores in orbit.

Olsen will be expected to help out with cleaning up the place or preparing meals, just like any crew member, said NASA astronaut Bill McArthur, who will be accompanying Olsen on a Russian Soyuz craft to take command of the space station.

“Greg really is a full member of the crew,” McArthur told MSNBC.com during a Tuesday news conference at the Russian cosmonaut training center here. “We look at who is busy with tasks, and who has free time that’s convenient. And if I fall in that situation, then I’m the one to make lunch.”

Tuesday’s session with Olsen, McArthur and Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev was the latest press event in a sort of farewell tour for the departing Soyuz crew. The three men are due to go into quarantine on Sunday, in preparation for the Oct. 1 launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

McArthur and Tokarev are due to relieve the station’s current long-term occupants, Russia’s Sergei Krikalev and NASA’s John Phillips, and begin a six-month tour of duty on the station. Olsen, however, will come back down to Earth with Krikalev and Phillips after a week on the orbital outpost.

Olsen, a 60-year-old New Jersey inventor/entrepreneur, is following in the footsteps of California millionaire Dennis Tito and South African millionaire Mark Shuttleworth — paying the Russians an eight-figure sum for months of cosmonaut training and the round trip to the space station. The Russians make such private-passenger seats available to raise money for their space program.

"I can guarantee that every cent from Gregory Olsen goes back into the federal space program," said Alexei Krasnov, director of manned spaceflight programs for Russia's Federal Space Agency.

More than a 'space tourist'?
Olsen made his fortune in fiber-optics communications and infrared imaging. He is the founder and current chairman of the board at New Jersey-based Sensors Unlimited, which is due to be purchased for $60 million by Goodrich Corp. by the end of the year.

Olsen dislikes the term “space tourist” and prefers to be called a private space researcher. He told reporters that his scientific background, which includes a Ph.D. in materials science, was one of the motivating factors for his trip.

“I'm a scientist in physics and electrical engineering, so space obviously is a very big interest,” he said.

In fact, one of Olsen’s infrared imagers was used during this summer’s Discovery mission to inspect the shuttle’s protective skin for damage.

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