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Greg Olsen, Starbucks, and space tourism

06.08.06

A CNET News.com article about a speech Greg Olsen gave at a San Francisco conference this week provides some general details about his experiences as a space tourist, but also some interesting insight into how he got interested in taking the Soyuz trip to the ISS in the first place:

A New Jersey resident, Olsen got the idea for his trip one morning in 2003 while reading the paper at a local Starbucks. Space Adventures–a U.S.-based space-travel agency contracted with Russia–had sent the first two private citizens to ISS, according to a news article that day. Olsen, who was recently flush with cash from the sale of his optical technology company Epitaxx to a telecom operator, decided it was a good time to pursue a long-held dream.

One other trivia item of note: it appears that Huggies is the diaper brand of choice among Soyuz crew members.