Paul Bass Photo
First-grader Nicholas Colombo sat rapt — and practically lifted off into space — when he got to see a real live astronaut come to his school Thursday.
Nicholas (pictured above), who lives in Branford, dreams of becoming a real live astronaut himself. He has a spacesuit ready. So his parents enrolled him in New Haven’s Mauro-Sheridan School, which has a NASA/space/ science-technology theme.
True to that theme, Mauro-Sheridan brought New Jerseyan Greg Olsen to speak to a student assembly in the gym. Olsen regaled them with stories about orbiting the earth 150 times at 17,000 miles an hour in 2005 at the age of 60 inside a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
Olsen paid $20 million for the privilege; he got the money (and more, apparently) selling a company he founded called Sensors Unlimited.
The price tag “was a bargain,” Olsen said after his hour-long presentation. “Now it’s up to $50 million.” Unlike Russia, NASA doesn’t let private citizens buy their way onto space shuttles.
He didn’t mention the price of admission during his talk. Instead, decked out in his space suit, Olsen focused on the nitty-gritty of being a spaceman — from eating Slim Jims and bobbing for floating pellets of floating water (click on the play arrow to watch him) to training beforehand for weeks — and on the obstacles he overcame to get there.
“How many of you use inhalers?” he asked. Hands shot up. He uses one, too, he said. That didn’t stop him from rocketing to the international space station on the Soyuz. He showed a video of himself using the inhaler while floating weightlessly on the journey.
“How many of you struggle with math?” Olsen asked at another point. He failed trig in high school, he revealed. “Yet I got to go into space. I got fancy degrees.”
Because of a black spot that appeared on his lung (that later proved harmless), Olsen had to apply nine times before receiving the go-ahead to join the Soyuz mission.
His message: “Don’t give up.” Even when something seems hard.
Afterwards the students echoed those words. They got the message. And they thought the part about the Slim Jims was especially cool.
So was the video in which Olsen emailed his daughter back on the ground in Jersey. The force of typing propelled him to the ceiling.
Floating for eight days was among the most fun parts of his space journey, Olsen said in response to a question from a student. He also go to see 16 sunrises and sunsets per day.
Fifth-grader Daniel Radcliffe of New Haven (at right in photo) said after the talk that he’d like to follow in Olsen’s moon boots. Not just by going into space. But by being a Russian astronaut, or “cosmonaut.” “I would like to learn the language,” he said. “And they have different space ships.”
Olsen brought along copies of a book he wrote about his space adventure, the title of which borrows a phrase made famous by Malcolm X. Nicholas Colombo got an edition autographed just for him.