May 3, 2006
Voyage to the International Space Station
Gregory Olsen
President, GHO Ventures
Minutes of the 31st Meeting of the 64th Year
President Haynes called the 31st meeting of the 64th year of the Old Guard to order at 10:15 a.m. with 109 members present. John Marks led the invocation.
Charlie Ufford read the minutes of the April 26 meeting. The high point was a lively summary of the talk of the previous speaker, Old Guard member Peter Lawson-Johnston, on the unique experience of "Growing Up Guggenheim" - the title and subject of his recent book.
Two guests and one visitor were present at the meeting. Ben Colbert introduced his guest, Dr. Charles Daves and President Haynes introduced his guest, Jim Clark. Phil Cruickshank introduced his visitor, his wife Natalie Cruickshank.
President Haynes called for a moment of silence in memory of Old Guard member William Noonan, who died during a visit to California on Friday, April 21.
Phil Cruickshank noted that ordered copies of the various sizes, and framing, of the recent photograph of Old Guard members could be picked up after the meeting, and orders could be placed for pickup at the next meeting on May 10.
Charlie Jaffin, chair of the nominating committee, asked the members if there were additional nominations to the slate of officers and committee chairmen presented at the April 26 meeting. There were no additional nominations, and all present voted in favor of the proposed officers and committee chairmen for the following program year.
Frank Long introduced the speaker, Dr. Gregory Olsen, President, GHO Ventures LLC , who had been invited to speak on his Voyage to the International Space Station. Dr. Olsen joined RCA's Princeton Labs as a research scientist in 1972. After 12 years of distinguished research on crystal growth, lasers, and photo-detectors, Dr. Olsen left RCA to engage in technology start-ups. One of these culminated in the founding of an infrared camera and sensor manufacturing and research company, Sensors Unlimited, which sold for 60 million dollars in 2005!
The subject of Dr. Olsen's talk was not his distinguished scientific or remarkable entrepreneurial career, but rather his Voyage to the International Space Station and his experience of orbiting the earth with Russian and American astronauts. For ten days he experienced a weightless world dominated by the Newtonian balance between the earth's gravitational field and the centrifugal force of the Space Station's 17,000mph orbital velocity.
Dr. Olsen's interest in space started as a boy of 12 in 1957. He found himself stimulated by the 18 year Russian American space race. This included the Russian satellite launch in 1957, John Glenn's earth orbit in 1962, the Gemini spacecraft rendezvous in 1965, the moon landing in 1969, and the meeting of Soviet and US astronauts on the Soyuz and Apollo space craft in 1975. The revolutionary technology developed by the competing space programs culminated in the start-up of the International Space Station in 1999. It also led Dr. Olsen to his technical and scientific career. It gave him a vision of the role that the awareness of current space science, engineering and technology could play in encouraging young people-especially minorities and females-to consider careers in science and technology. Dr. Olsen's personal interest and vision led to his investment of 20 million dollars in order to be the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station - an investment that resulted in his stimulating Power Point presentation at the Old Guard.
During Dr. Olsen's presentation, we learned about the 900 hours spent in 5 months of training required in order to be accepted as "visitor" on the Space Station - training in safety, survival, gravity-free movement, validation of space suit vacuum technology, and finally the requirement to speak and understand Russian. We saw videos of Dr. Olsen happily surviving zero gravity airplane training, where he was "thrown" by one instructor, and "caught" by another!
In the launch from the steppes of Kazakhstan on September 30, 2005, Dr. Olsen was accompanied by two Space Station replacement Russian and American astronauts, the commander and flight engineer of the 7 ft diameter Soyuz space craft. Dr. Olsen experienced a 3.5g acceleration force in attaining the Space Station speed of 17,000 mph - the equivalent of having 3.5 bodies of his own weight lying on top of him! He departed the Space Station 10 days later, in the same Soyuz space craft, but with two Russian and American astronauts who were returning to earth after 10 months in space. The rough descent stage of the Soyuz module through the atmosphere produced a deceleration force of 4.5g's, and temperatures higher than 2000C for the heat shield. Despite these extremes, the parachute landing was only 5 miles away from the launch site.
Highlights of Dr. Olsen's presentation were exciting video and digital camera scenes in which the Old Guard audience saw life in a gravity-free space, where droplets of water from a drinking hose floated randomly in space and only "sticky food" that would stay in contact with a fork could be used for nutrition. We saw that there was no sense of "up and down" in a waking day, or even a "sleeping night", with Dr. Olsen asleep in a sleeping bag tied down to an arbitrary wall location. We learned about the difficult, but solvable, problem of using a toilet in a space, where there was no physical definition of "up and down"!
After 10 days in gravity free space, and 4 million miles of earth orbit, Dr. Olsen gained an inch in height, but he soon lost that height gain in the 2 days spent relearning how to walk in the earth's gravity. The two astronauts who landed with him and who had 10 months in space required 2 weeks of recovery before they regained their walking shoes!
Dr. Olsen shared his admiration for the teamwork, and indeed bonding, between the Russian and American astronauts, on the shuttle and the Space Station, as well as his high regard for the Russian shuttle technology that he experienced at first hand in the Soyuz space craft. He had hoped to be able to explore crystal growth of InAsSb in space, but the facilities for such experiments were not yet in place, since the Space Station is still only 60% complete. However, he assisted in a research program on space health issues such as motion sickness, and returned to earth with 50 swabs he took over the inside walls of the shuttle to identify potential bacterial problems for the Space Station.
Dr. Olsen's talk and Power Point presentation generated nineteen questions from a rapt audience that wanted to learn even more about space technology and science.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
George D. Cody
Charlie Ufford read the minutes of the April 26 meeting. The high point was a lively summary of the talk of the previous speaker, Old Guard member Peter Lawson-Johnston, on the unique experience of "Growing Up Guggenheim" - the title and subject of his recent book.
Two guests and one visitor were present at the meeting. Ben Colbert introduced his guest, Dr. Charles Daves and President Haynes introduced his guest, Jim Clark. Phil Cruickshank introduced his visitor, his wife Natalie Cruickshank.
President Haynes called for a moment of silence in memory of Old Guard member William Noonan, who died during a visit to California on Friday, April 21.
Phil Cruickshank noted that ordered copies of the various sizes, and framing, of the recent photograph of Old Guard members could be picked up after the meeting, and orders could be placed for pickup at the next meeting on May 10.
Charlie Jaffin, chair of the nominating committee, asked the members if there were additional nominations to the slate of officers and committee chairmen presented at the April 26 meeting. There were no additional nominations, and all present voted in favor of the proposed officers and committee chairmen for the following program year.
Frank Long introduced the speaker, Dr. Gregory Olsen, President, GHO Ventures LLC , who had been invited to speak on his Voyage to the International Space Station. Dr. Olsen joined RCA's Princeton Labs as a research scientist in 1972. After 12 years of distinguished research on crystal growth, lasers, and photo-detectors, Dr. Olsen left RCA to engage in technology start-ups. One of these culminated in the founding of an infrared camera and sensor manufacturing and research company, Sensors Unlimited, which sold for 60 million dollars in 2005!
The subject of Dr. Olsen's talk was not his distinguished scientific or remarkable entrepreneurial career, but rather his Voyage to the International Space Station and his experience of orbiting the earth with Russian and American astronauts. For ten days he experienced a weightless world dominated by the Newtonian balance between the earth's gravitational field and the centrifugal force of the Space Station's 17,000mph orbital velocity.
Dr. Olsen's interest in space started as a boy of 12 in 1957. He found himself stimulated by the 18 year Russian American space race. This included the Russian satellite launch in 1957, John Glenn's earth orbit in 1962, the Gemini spacecraft rendezvous in 1965, the moon landing in 1969, and the meeting of Soviet and US astronauts on the Soyuz and Apollo space craft in 1975. The revolutionary technology developed by the competing space programs culminated in the start-up of the International Space Station in 1999. It also led Dr. Olsen to his technical and scientific career. It gave him a vision of the role that the awareness of current space science, engineering and technology could play in encouraging young people-especially minorities and females-to consider careers in science and technology. Dr. Olsen's personal interest and vision led to his investment of 20 million dollars in order to be the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station - an investment that resulted in his stimulating Power Point presentation at the Old Guard.
During Dr. Olsen's presentation, we learned about the 900 hours spent in 5 months of training required in order to be accepted as "visitor" on the Space Station - training in safety, survival, gravity-free movement, validation of space suit vacuum technology, and finally the requirement to speak and understand Russian. We saw videos of Dr. Olsen happily surviving zero gravity airplane training, where he was "thrown" by one instructor, and "caught" by another!
In the launch from the steppes of Kazakhstan on September 30, 2005, Dr. Olsen was accompanied by two Space Station replacement Russian and American astronauts, the commander and flight engineer of the 7 ft diameter Soyuz space craft. Dr. Olsen experienced a 3.5g acceleration force in attaining the Space Station speed of 17,000 mph - the equivalent of having 3.5 bodies of his own weight lying on top of him! He departed the Space Station 10 days later, in the same Soyuz space craft, but with two Russian and American astronauts who were returning to earth after 10 months in space. The rough descent stage of the Soyuz module through the atmosphere produced a deceleration force of 4.5g's, and temperatures higher than 2000C for the heat shield. Despite these extremes, the parachute landing was only 5 miles away from the launch site.
Highlights of Dr. Olsen's presentation were exciting video and digital camera scenes in which the Old Guard audience saw life in a gravity-free space, where droplets of water from a drinking hose floated randomly in space and only "sticky food" that would stay in contact with a fork could be used for nutrition. We saw that there was no sense of "up and down" in a waking day, or even a "sleeping night", with Dr. Olsen asleep in a sleeping bag tied down to an arbitrary wall location. We learned about the difficult, but solvable, problem of using a toilet in a space, where there was no physical definition of "up and down"!
After 10 days in gravity free space, and 4 million miles of earth orbit, Dr. Olsen gained an inch in height, but he soon lost that height gain in the 2 days spent relearning how to walk in the earth's gravity. The two astronauts who landed with him and who had 10 months in space required 2 weeks of recovery before they regained their walking shoes!
Dr. Olsen shared his admiration for the teamwork, and indeed bonding, between the Russian and American astronauts, on the shuttle and the Space Station, as well as his high regard for the Russian shuttle technology that he experienced at first hand in the Soyuz space craft. He had hoped to be able to explore crystal growth of InAsSb in space, but the facilities for such experiments were not yet in place, since the Space Station is still only 60% complete. However, he assisted in a research program on space health issues such as motion sickness, and returned to earth with 50 swabs he took over the inside walls of the shuttle to identify potential bacterial problems for the Space Station.
Dr. Olsen's talk and Power Point presentation generated nineteen questions from a rapt audience that wanted to learn even more about space technology and science.
The meeting was adjourned at 11:30 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
George D. Cody