Space Traveler Olsen Shares Life Lessons with Class

By age 60, Gregory H. Olsen had obtained multiple degrees, started and sold two high-tech companies for more than $650 million and had made it to outer space. Olsen admits that he faced many personal and professional obstacles, yet he never let them stand in the way of his dreams.

“All through my life, I learned this lesson: Don’t let yourself give up,” Olsen told a group of students recently during a visit to Rider University’s Lawrenceville campus.

Mark Kasrel, executive in residence and Harper Professor, invited Olsen, an entrepreneur, engineer and scientist, to speak to students in his in PMBA 8906: Selected Topics - Personal Financial Management on January 9. The class is composed of graduate students in the Rider University-Sanda University (Shanghai, China) dual degree program.

Olsen admitted to the students that he never had his sights on going to college. With poor grades in high school, he thought about getting a job as an electrician like his father or joining the U.S. Army. However, his father convinced him to try a year in college, so Olsen enrolled at Fairleigh Dickinson University. At the time, the space program was expanding and he decided that he wanted to be an engineer. He eventually obtained bachelor’s degrees in Physics and Elementary Education, and a master’s degree in Physics from Fairleigh Dickinson. Later, he received a doctorate in Materials Science from the University of Virginia.

After working as a technical staff member at RCA, Olsen founded Epitax, Inc., a fiber optic detector manufacturer, in 1984, and later Sensors Unlimited, a near-infrared camera manufacturer in 2002. He recently sold Sensors Unlimited.

“When I founded my start-up company, that was my Nobel Prize,” Olsen told the students.

In 2003, after reading about how U.S. citizens Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth were selected as space tourists to travel to the International Space Station through Space Adventures, Olsen was inspired to participate. He applied and was rejected multiple times because of medical issues,  but Olsen persisted and was finally selected to participate in the Soyuz TMA-6 mission with Commander Sergei Krikalev, RKA, and Flight Engineers John Phillips, NASA, and Roberto Vittori, ESA. The spacecraft was launched on October 1, 2005, and the crew spent 10 days in space.

“The lesson I learned at age 60 was the same lesson I learned when I failed trigonometry at age 16,” Olsen said. “If you really want to do something, don’t give up.”

Olsen showed video clips of what it was like to eat food, drink water, send e-mail and sleep in space.

“It’s a magical feeling, even though I understand all the physics behind it,” said Olsen about being weightless in space.

Olsen also shared with the students other life lessons he has learned along the way: “trust your instinct and others,” “family comes first,” “work hard and opportunity will come,” “find something that makes [you] happy,” and “don’t take [rejection] personally.”

Currently, Olsen is president of GHO Ventures, which he uses to provide capital to business start-ups; manage his South African winery and Montana ranch, and perform speaking engagements.

Kasrel, who serves as Olsen’s life coach, described his client as optimistic and tenacious. “I want people to know, you don’t have to be the brightest student in class to be successful,” Kasrel said.

Lingling Jiang, a graduate student in the Rider University-Sanda University dual degree program, said she enjoyed listening to Olsen’s presentation.

“He encouraged us to persist in doing things and have new ideas,” Jiang said. “I think if you have a dream, you should find ways to attain it and not give up.”