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On a mission to tell of his unforgettable trip.(Greg Olsen)(Biography)
Byline: Tom Avril
PHILADELPHIA _ Crouched in a metal compartment little bigger than a shower stall, Greg Olsen heard the voice in his earpiece count down in Russian as the powerful engines rumbled:
Launching in one minute ... launching in 30 seconds ... launching in 10 seconds ...
Then: Poyekhali!
And the 60-year-old New Jersey businessman was sucked into his seat at more than three times the force of gravity as rockets pushed the Soyuz capsule into the air. Within eight minutes, he had shot up more than 200 miles, dazzled by the blue Earth below and vast blackness around him.
Last month, after paying $20 million to an American company that acts as a go-between with Russian officials, Olsen became the third private citizen in outer space.
"Every day, I would wake up and say, 'Is this really true?'" he said.
The trip lasted 10 days, eight of them aboard the International Space Station. He took off from Kazakhstan, in the former Soviet Union, with a Russian cosmonaut and a U.S. astronaut who …
