Ex-Bergen man buys ticket to space station ; Physicist pays $20M for a seat on Soyuz

Physicist Greg Olsen had an extra $20 million in his bank account.

Russian astronauts had a spare berth on a launch bound for the International Space Station.

Olsen made a call. The Russians said sure. And as early as October, Olsen – a Ridgefield Park High School graduate who made a fortune in optics research – will be the next civilian in space.

Unlike the two men who went on such flights as tourists in 2002 and 2001, Olsen is going as a researcher, conducting eight days of study on pollution and agriculture. He hopes to publish his findings in science journals. More important, he says, he plans to lecture New Jersey schoolchildren, particularly those in poor districts, on the merits of hard work.

“I’m an average guy,” he insisted Monday. “I’m not a genius. I didn’t come from privileged people. I didn’t go to the best of schools. I just fought my way up.”

He booked the trip through Space Adventures of Arlington, Va., which makes arrangements with the Russian space program. On Thursday, Olsen will leave for Star City, the Russian version of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, for six months of training, including lessons in orbital mechanics, high-altitude flights, and scuba dives to simulate weightlessness.

“I went through the psychological testing and they’ve determined I’m not a nut,” he said.

Olsen, 58, was born in Brooklyn, his mother a schoolteacher and his father an electrician. The family briefly moved to the Poconos – “My dad thought it would be a good idea to move to the country” – but couldn’t swing it on a $20-a-week income. They moved to Ridgefield Park in 1954 and Olsen graduated high school – barely – with the Class of 1962.

“I had to make up trigonometry before I went to Fairleigh Dickinson University,” he said.

With undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics from FDU, he went on to the University of Virginia, where he earned a doctorate in materials science. He did post-doctoral work in South Africa, then returned to the United States and settled in Princeton.

In 1984 Olsen founded Epitaxx Inc., a fiber-optics manufacturer that he later sold, and he followed a similar path with his next company, the fiber-optics developer Sensors Unlimited, which he sold for $700 million in 2000.

He bought back the company in 2002 and retooled, focusing on infrared cameras for military use. He will have some of that equipment with him on the spacecraft Soyuz.

“It’s the next frontier,” he said of his fascination with space. “It’s the unknown. I’m just pleased to be able to go out on a scientific mission and use a camera that was developed right here in New Jersey.”

He is divorced and the father of two daughters, 30-year-old Krista and 31-year-old Kim. He is mindful of the space shuttle Columbia disaster a year ago, when seven astronauts perished as the shuttle broke apart on reentry after a 16-day mission. But he does not dwell on the victims’ fate, and he has the support of his family.

“It’s the same reason you get in your car every night and don’t feel fear,” he said. “Risk is part of life. I’ve lived my whole life not worrying about things.”

The mission is scheduled for April 2005, although Olsen has been told it could be rescheduled for this October. Between training sessions at Space City, he will be fine-tuning his experiments, which involve surveying water vapor in crops and mineral content in soil.

Considering the $20 million charge for his trip, Olsen said he understood why some would argue his money would have better uses on Earth, such as fighting hunger or funding health initiatives.

“I thought a long time about that and that was the first issue I had to deal with,” he said. He leaned toward what he called “the scientific value of our mission” and his intention to “go around and talk to dozens and dozens and hopefully hundreds of high schools and tell them about my experience.”

“They can see a guy who struggled in high school can go on to get a Ph.D. in the sciences,” he said.

It’s the type of lesson that Richard Capalbo, a childhood friend now living in California, said has far more impact when he recalls Olsen’s years in high school and college.

“He had a guidance counselor, and he told Greg to join the Army because he would never amount to anything,” Capalbo said. “Then when Greg went to Fairleigh Dickinson, the school had nothing. He would actually be building the machines” to use in science labs.

“This guy is the perennial failure, and he turns out to be a marvel physicist,” he said. “Here’s a guy who can do anything he wants in the world. His motives are, ‘I want to help kids.’ He thinks, ‘When God gives you a lot of gifts, you have to give things back.’

“He built a building down at the University of Virginia. He didn’t put his name on it. He put his teacher’s name on it. There’s another addition to the library in Ridgefield Park. He put his mother’s name on it. You’ll never see [a building] with his name on it,” Capalbo said. “People all over the place are saying, ‘Who is this Greg Olsen guy?’ I can tell you. I know who he is and it’s been one of the delights of my life to know him.”

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