Greg Olsen training log
These four entries were originally published at Go to Orbit. Dr. Olsen initially did not qualify for the flight in 2004 for unspecified medical reasons and the website section was taken down, so I reproduced the entries here. In 2005 he requalified again and was set to fly up on Soyuz TMA-7 in October 2005.
June 3, 2004
Dr. Greg Olsen arrives at Star City, has his first physical session with the head trainer, and is introduced to the cosmonaut’s old friend: the Russian sauna.
When Dr. Greg Olsen arrived in Star City yesterday, it was cool and rainy, and the campus of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC) looked more grey than usual. It wasn’t Greg’s first visit to Star City, but this time was markedly different – he had packed for six months. This time he isn’t a visitor – he’s a resident. After he moved into his apartment, Greg was taken to an auditorium where he was formally introduced to the training staff and management of GCTC, and to the Moscow press and TV crews. Greg’s arrival at Star City is big news. After all, he is just the third person who will go through the cosmonaut training program here and travel in space as a private explorer. So he has become a bit of an attraction as he prepares for his flight to the International Space Station.
The staff at GCTC did not waste any time starting Greg’s intensive language studies. Actually, it’s an immersion program – since few people at Star City speak English – but Greg also has daily private lessons with an instructor. It is important for him to learn Russian so that during the flight to the ISS he can read instrument panels, heed warnings, communicate with his crewmates and talk to Moscow Mission Control. During the first couple days at Star City, Greg was more worried about learning the language than any other part of training. But he’s not the first student to complain about learning Russian. Expatriate Americans joke that learning the Russian language isn’t so bad: it’s just the first decade that is difficult.
The first physical training, or “PT,” was a brief exercise session in the gym with the head trainer, Colonel Alexander “Sasha” Novakov. Sasha is about 5′8″ and is built like a gymnast. He is thin but is as solid as a rock and has a tough, serious face. Greg is finding him to be an effective trainer because he is an expert when it comes to physical fitness, and he also provides the right level of encouragement. The gym is well-equipped, with the kind of machines and equipment you would see in any modern gym. But this gym also has a few interesting training pieces that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. One looks like a stationary bicycle, but it is anything but stationary. Once a rider begins to pedal, the entire bike spins around its axis perpendicular to the floor (imagine a bike atop a record player). This “stationary cycle” simulates the famous (or rather, infamous) Vestibular chair used in training, on which a cosmonaut trainee spins in each direction for ten minutes while tilting his h ead side to side to produce an extra level of motion input to the brain. And if you haven’t already guessed, it also induces nausea.
But this type of training is critical. It doesn’t prevent space sickness, but rather, measures a cosmonaut’s ability to function effectively under stress and while feeling really lousy. Vestibular training starts with a 10-minute interval in the chair. Then a trainee is seated at a table and required to do a page of math problems under the observation of a psychologist seated across from him. The math work is followed by another session in the chair.
After Greg’s workout, he heads over to the men’s locker room to change. There are actually two locker rooms. One houses Yuri Gagarin’s locker, which still holds his gym gear in it: sneakers, towels, shorts and, of all things, a badminton racket. As part of their varied physical training regimens, cosmonauts play badminton. Although Americans think of it as an archaic backyard picnic sport, it actually is aerobic and can be a very good workout when done correctly. Another benefit for trainees: it improves hand-eye coordination. Plus, it’s an inexpensive sport to set up, and it can be played year-round, inside or out.
Walking through the locker room, Greg notices names above the lockers: names of cosmonauts and astronauts who are currently training or who use the gym on a regular basis. Today, Greg ran into one cosmonaut who recently returned from his six-month expedition aboard the ISS. He was getting ready to work out in the gym, no doubt trying to reverse the effects of long-duration zero-gravity on the body. In space you lose muscle mass, bone density and calcium. Not to mention that when you first return to Earth, it’s physically challenging to simply stand up and walk when you are balancing under the load of our planet’s gravity.
Greg’s daily workouts are similar to those he did with his trainer back home in Princeton, N.J. He usually does about 20 minutes on the stationary cycle, 30 minutes with various free weights and then 40 laps in the pool (the equivalent of one kilometer). Greg swims like a pro – or rather, like a fish, as several cosmonauts commented, as they watched him from the pool deck. He moves through the water quickly and smoothly, wearing a mask and snorkel. He says swimming, which many people say can be a meditative sport, allows him to escape, giving his mind some much-needed space for problem-solving.
After about 45 minutes in the pool, Greg is finally rewarded with what is perhaps the best part of the gym: the sauna, or “banya.” Russian saunas tend to be dryer than Scandinavian saunas, but they are used in the same manner. You sit on one of the three temperature levels – or steps – for five to 10 minutes, then take a shockingly cold shower and repeat. This sauna is 100 degrees Celsius, or 210 Fahrenheit, so you’re dying for that cold shower after a few minutes. The sauna is a good place to practice a little Russian or to discuss world affairs. But the best thing about the banya is that it’s considered a near-sacred spot where a cosmonaut-in-training can break from a strenuous schedule and take a rare moment to do nothing but relax.
Coming up next: learning Russian, and Soyuz TMA: an elegantly simple spacecraft.
June 10, 2004
Learning the Russian language, centrifuge training, and a quick lunch – all in a day’s work.
When Greg Olsen received a notice last week to pick up a package at the Star City post office, he knew exactly what he was going to do: prepare to speak to the post office clerk in Russian. “Before I went, I rehearsed,” he says. “I’m really starting to gain confidence now, and locals are very patient and very understanding.”
Although the post office experience was a positive one, Greg still – almost two months into his training for spaceflight at Star City – finds learning the Russian language to be the most challenging part of his preparation. He doesn’t consider himself a fast learner, but he is plowing through his workbooks and working with his instructor, knowing that learning Russian is a critical part of the experience. He says even though he has learned a lot of words, it’s not always easy to recognize them in conversation, because people are speaking so quickly. “It doesn’t even register on my screen,” he says. He compares the recognition to Microsoft Word’s recognition of a misspelled word, by highlighting it. “It’s the same for me, and it’s starting to happen a bit now, when I hear a word I recognize, it’s like it is highlighted in my brain.”
Not only is the language barrier tough in conversation, but as Greg learns the controls on the Soyuz simulator console, he simply has to memorize the location of the buttons before he can read what they all say. “By the time of the launch,” Greg jokes, “I’ll just be picking up the language.”
Like most people at Star City, Greg has a tightly packed schedule, with classes and training from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. In the morning, he takes two classes and then has an hour break for lunch, though he hardly spends that long in the cafeteria. “These are the fastest meals I’ve ever seen in my life,” he laughs. “When you sit down, there’s a salad waiting for you already.” The server tells him what’s on the menu, he tells her what he’d like and, “within 15 seconds, she’s back with the main course in the left hand, soup in the right.”
The Russian food seems to have grown on Greg – he raves about the bread and soup, which is usually borscht or bullion with native fish. Main course options typically include stuffed cabbage, meat cutlet and ribya, or fish. Whatever the food, it’s eaten quickly. “I’ve watched guys come in and leave in five minutes,” Greg says. “Three courses. People are busy here. There’s much more to do than eat a leisurely lunch.”
Afternoons are filled with physical training and more classes, but Greg says training on the TsF-18 Centrifuge wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do right after lunch. This past week, Greg visited the centrifuge for the second time. The first time he reached 4.5 Gs, and he felt fine. This time, he was headed for 8.0.
“You really can’t prepare for it,” he says, “but I wouldn’t advise eating a big meal beforehand.” Greg arrived in the building where the massive blue centrifuge is housed, and he was hooked up to an EKG by the medical crew so they could monitor his vital signs as the gravity forces increased. He climbed into the cockpit, the camera focused on his face, and the centrifuge operator started off slowly, warming Greg up for the big G-forces.
“They say, ‘OK, we’ll do 2 Gs now. How do you feel?’” Greg says. “Then they move up to 3 Gs and ask how you feel.” Then they ramped the centrifuge up to 4.5 Gs and left it there for one minute. At this point, Greg remembers trying to smile into the camera as his face was being pulled back by the pressure. Finally, he was spinning fast enough to simulate 8 Gs, and he was held there for 30 seconds before the machine decelerated. The entire exercise lasted about 30 minutes. “My vision started to blur a little, and maybe I had a bit of tunnel vision,” he says. “But I felt fine.”
During his training, Greg has minimal interaction with other cosmonaut trainees, because everyone has such an intense schedule, and for the most part, people are working independently on training programs tailored to their specific needs. Once a crew is finalized (which will happen for Greg in late June), the crew begins training together. For example, Greg says a Russian crew is going to Siberia this week for skydiving training. No matter the nationality, everyone at Star City is extremely serious about his or her training, although Greg says the Japanese trainees have struck him as especially focused.
Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no time for fun. On the weekends, there are usually parties at apartments in Star City. This is especially the case when there has been a launch or lauding, and NASA representatives are in town to host parties in their “cottages,” which Greg says look like typical American townhouses. These parties are a nice way to socialize with other people training at Star City, and for Greg, a welcome excuse to speak English to fellow Americans.
This weekend, however, Greg is laying low, because he has “midterms” next week on two topics: the electrical system in the Russian part of the International Space Station and the life support system in the Soyuz. He went to Moscow today to buy a new pair of glasses, and he caught up on laundry. But most of all, he says, “I am trying to avoid social things so I can study for these exams.”
June 17, 2004
Olsen discusses training in Russia, midterm exams, and getting fitted for his spacesuit.
For Greg Olsen, living in Star City means living without many of the comforts, conveniences and luxuries he enjoyed at home in Princeton, N.J. Since he began training two months ago, he hasn’t driven a car, although he doesn’t miss that much. He also doesn’t read the newspaper or watch TV. And hasn’t been able to keep up with The Sopranos because the DVD system he set up in his Star City apartment isn’t compatible with American discs. But the luxury he decided he couldn’t possibly live without is Starbucks coffee.
“My normal day back home in Princeton,” Greg says, “I’d be at Starbucks by 7:15 reading the New York Times with a big cup of coffee. Here, I get up at 6:15, turn on the automatic coffee maker I brought, get on the Internet and download my previous day’s emails. And that’s my morning coffee routine.”
Greg brought four pounds of ground Starbucks coffee with him to Star City. Typically, he will drink two or three cups in the morning before breakfast since he says the coffee in the cafeteria is “half coffee, half milk, and not exactly what I call coffee.”
The apartment building where Greg lives in Star City is a typical Russian-looking concrete structure with 11 floors. He lives on the fourth floor and when leaving, he always uses the stairs. “Going up, it’s about half and half,” Greg says. “If I’ve had an especially hard workout, I’ll take the elevator.” The apartment has two bedrooms, and more closet space than Greg could possibly use. He ends up lining up his lecture notes in the extra space, especially when he’s getting organized to study for an exam.
In the last week, Greg says the training program seems to have entered a new level of intensity. “It’s midterm time, and it’s getting to the point where if you miss a class, it’s pretty serious,” he says.
This week, much of his class focus is on emergency procedures. In the ISS Lifesaving class, Greg has learned how to detect fires, how the air is purified and how to use the fire extinguisher and smoke detector. Greg’s background as a scientist certainly helps, since he already understands the electrical systems, but much of it is new, like how much oxygen a person consumes and how much carbon dioxide they emit in an hour. He learned about various types of fire extinguishers (Russians use distilled water with foam, whereas Americans use a carbon dioxide extinguisher) and practiced putting on a gas mask.
“It’s like being an airline pilot,” Greg says about the trip to space. “Ninety-eight percent of the time is sheer boredom, but for that 2 percent that’s terror, you have to be ready for that stuff.”
In the Soyuz simulator, Greg continues to learn console controls and commands for docking, opening the hatch and communication. Even though most everything is automated from the ground, and Greg’s two crewmates will be responsible for the command and engineering of the capsule, Greg still must learn everything in case the Soyuz loses contact or in case of an emergency. “They’re training me with all the stuff the other guys know,” Greg says. “But they’ve been training for years. I wouldn’t pretend to be their equals. I’m just trying to be the best research cosmonaut – or they also call my spot the right-seater – I can be.”
The instructors set up all kinds of “what if” scenarios and ask questions such as, “When you dock, how do you know when it’s safe to open the hatch?” And Greg answers that it’s safe after you take pressure readings every minute and determine the leak rate is slow enough that you can open the equalization valve.
Last week, Greg went for his first spacesuit fitting, outside Moscow. The company has been making spacesuits for decades, and Greg met some employees who had been there for 40 years, including one man who said he had made a suit for Yuri Gagarin.
Greg says he was honored to be there, but after the formalities, he had to lose his modesty pretty quickly. Fifteen men and women hovered around him, stripping off his clothes, taking measurements and eventually placing him in a tub wearing a thin plastic liner in the shape of a one-piece cycling suit. Room-temperature plaster was poured on Greg’s mid-section to create a mold for his Soyuz seat, which is custom made for each cosmonaut and which absorbs shock in case of a hard landing back on Earth. After about 20 minutes in a half-foot of plaster around his back, rear and thighs, the mold had hardened. Then a technician lowered a crane down toward the tub. The crane held a small table with two handles.
“They said, ‘Hold on,’ and they pulled me out of the mold,” Greg says. “They did that two more times. Getting out definitely felt weird.”
Next, Greg tried on and was issued two flight suits, three changes of underwear (for the week aboard the ISS), socks, shorts and t-shirts, all cotton. “Some people probably would get really excited about this,” he says, ”but I guess I’m a typical guy. I just said let me know what I need, give it to me all in the same color, and send it up.”
Greg says everything that goes up to the ISS must be approved, but he’s still trying to confirm rumors that there is a guitar on the station. “Someone said there’s one up there,” he says. “So I thought just in case, I should practice.” Greg used to play folk songs on his guitar but hasn’t picked one up in 25 or 30 years. “I just bought a guitar at a music store in Moscow and play in my apartment,” he says. “Right now, I’m just entertaining myself.”
Next week: Greg goes to a shashlik party. Imagine a 55-gallon oil drum split in half, with burning coal and wood. This is shashlik, or Russian barbecue. And just like in the United States, you’re not a real man if you can’t shashlik.
June 24, 2004
Two months finished, four months left of training.
Each week at Star City, the intensity level increases for Greg Olsen, who is now two months into his six-month training for spaceflight. These days, free time is nearly nonexistent, and when Greg isn’t in class, he is studying for an exam or reviewing the seemingly endless string of Russian words he must memorize. Cosmonauts don’t have time for small talk in the hallways, and meals in the Star City cafeteria continue to be consumed at speeds of about Mach 5. But that doesn’t mean Greg can’t find a block of time for fun now and then, especially when it comes to getting down on the dance floor.
Last weekend Greg ate dinner at a restaurant in Star City where he often dines – a quiet, laid-back kind of place, he says. He has gotten to know the people who work there and the regulars, and like other Russians he’s met, everyone there is warm and friendly and hospitable. “After I ate, I left and was walking home,” he says, “and they pulled me in for some dancing.” So what does a tall white American man who prefers the hustle and swing do on a Russian dance floor? “Actually, I just bounced around,” he says. “I didn’t have trouble finding people to dance with, and it was a lot of fun.”
The fun didn’t end on the dance floor. Last weekend, Greg also attended a shashlik party, or a Russian barbecue. He says the meat is cooked on skewers, like shish kabob, but rather than skewering cubes of meat, the Russians tend to skewer an entire slab. Greg says other than that, and the omnipresent language barrier, it was very much like an American party, with lots of beer, wine and vodka.
In the classroom, Greg began his training on food and water consumption. Learning how to eat on the International Space Station isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. First, ISS residents have to be careful not to produce crumbs or droplets of liquid, because in microgravity they will simply float around the cabin, and can damage controls or can be dangerous if inhaled while sleeping. Even eating utensils – fork, spoon, knife and the all-important scissors for opening meal packets – will float around if not secured with Velcro or a magnet.
Much of the food is reconstituted by adding hot water or heating it in a convection oven. “You can have pretty much whatever you want,” Greg says. “They have a lot of options today. There are fresh fruits, vacuum-packed meats, pretty good stuff. You’re not going to get a barbecued steak up there, but most everything else you can order.” Hundreds of types of food are now served on the ISS, including pumpkin pie, pork chops, pizza and pretzels.
Greg hasn’t sampled the foods yet, but he will be required to try everything while he’s still on Earth to make sure he doesn’t have a reaction to it. Each cosmonaut sits down individually for an interview with a nutritionist at Star City and plans what food he will have sent up for his meals, since no two cosmonauts have exactly the same food preferences. For Greg’s voyage, he could probably make do eating foods he wasn’t crazy about for a week, but for the cosmonauts who stay on the ISS for six months, it’s more important – for nutrition and morale – that they have meals they’ll enjoy.
In his class, Greg learned about drinking with a mouthpiece so droplets of liquid don’t escape. There are also special straws with clamps on the end that can be closed to prevent liquids from getting out. He has seen space films in which astronauts play around with a floating bubble of water and then drink it, but he’s learned that if you do that often enough, one time it’s going to splatter around the space station and create a mess. “Same goes for crumbs,” he says. “They get stuck in the filter. So when you eat, the food goes from the package to your mouth. No bites.” Greg says he is allocated 2850 calories a day on the ISS but only 1600 on the Soyuz, where the passengers don’t move around much, don’t have food preparation facilities and can’t afford to create much waste.
Greg also took a personal hygiene class last week, which he says was not really all that personal. He learned about how often he would be able to change clothes (not often enough), how to wash his face (with a large wipe in a foil package) and how to brush his teeth (over a sink with a suction). And at night, everyone floats into their sleeping bag, which has a liner that is changed frequently. “It’s kind of like camping out at someone’s ski lodge,” Greg says. “Everyone just finds a spot – on the wall, attached to the ceiling – and that’s where you sleep.”
Last week, Greg passed an exam on the Soyuz communication system. Before any exam, his instructor will schedule a consultation when Greg is free to ask any questions, and the test is then administered the following day. He has had so many tests recently that he says taking them is “getting to be like old hat.” But that doesn’t mean his nerves don’t act up. “Every time, I still get butterflies in my belly when I walk in to that room,” he says. This week, he will be introduced to the massive flight manuals that include every technical detail imaginable about spaceflight. Together, the manuals are about as big as two large phone books. And of course, they’re all in Russian.
Linked from Cosmonaut news 2004