Millionaire Gregory Olsen, Tourist, Blasts Off To Space Station

A Soyuz rocket lifted off Saturday from the Central Asian steppe, heading out for a two-day journey to the international space station. The rocket is carrying a Russian-American crew and the third "space tourist" to launch into orbit, U.S. millionaire scientist Gregory Olsen. Olsen is the 60-year old co-founder of Sensors Unlimited, Inc., a company based in Princeton, NJ, that makes infrared imaging cameras and other fiber-optic communications components. Olsen reportedly paid $20 million for his seat on the Expedition 12 flight. His trip had been scheduled for earlier in the year but had to be pushed out when Russian doctors discovered an unspecified medical ailment that has since been resolved.

Olsen told reporters before blasting off, "This has been two years of very hard work. In 20 hours, I will feel very, very good. All I have to do is talk to my 4-year old Grandson, Justin. That’s all the mental preparation I need." Justin and the rest of Olsen’s family watched in fascination from a viewing platform at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as the rocket streaked into the sky with an earsplitting blast. Justin clamped his hands over his ears, his mouth wide open, as his mother, Krista Dibsie, filmed the liftoff with a video camera. When the spacecraft entered its initial designated orbit 9 minutes later and the crew reported that all was well aboard the craft, the assembled crowd burst into applause and cheers. With her head tilted skyward and tears rolling down her cheeks, Dibsie quietly murmured, "There goes Dad. Love you, Dad." She later told reporters, "Now I’m nervous for him. I wasn’t before, but now he’s up there and gosh, he’s out of this world. I can’t believe it."

Last night Olsen spoke to the Associated Press by telephone, and staunchly defended his flight in the space capsule as a necessary step in the ongoing evolution of space travel. Olsen, who holds advanced degrees in physics and materials science, said "I would hope that my flight would help, if just to make space flight more routine." Olsen says that he prefers the term "space flight participant" to the term "space tourist." "'Tourism' implies that anyone can just write a check and go up there. That's not what happened," he told the AP.

The Russian Federal Space Agency has turned to space tourism during recent years as a way to generate money to fund their cash-strapped research endeavors. California businessman Dennis Tito paid about $20 million in 2001 for a weeklong trip to the space station, and South African Mark Shuttleworth followed a year later.