Olsen's Space Flight Was a Medical Odyssey

Olsen's Space Flight Was a Medical Odyssey

The entrepreneur had to overcome major lung problems before blasting
off

http://www.njbiz.com/weekly_article.asp?aID=46902127.5728976.854854.7931901.7147711.640&aID2=65749

12/19/2005

Browns Mills

By William T. Quinn

While Greg Olsen was orbiting the earth in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft
in October, he talked by video hookup with students at Ridgefield Park
High, his alma mater, about the scientific experiments he was
performing.

But he didn't mention what may have been the biggest experiment of
them all: the one he was conducting on himself to see if a 60-year-old
man with emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and a
cardiac arrhythmia could safely handle the rigors of space flight.

Now Olsen, the founder of Sensors Unlimited in Princeton, has
authorized his doctors to discuss the medical back story to the 10-day
space flight that took him from Kazakhstan to the International Space
Station and back to earth, where he returned to worldwide acclaim.

Dr. David Murphy, a pulmonologist at Deborah Heart and Lung Center in
Browns Mills, says the medical challenges Olsen faced made his space
voyage an even riskier venture than it otherwise would have been.

"I feel he didn't get the credit for what he did. Talk about being
a hero, he has beaten a new path for the ordinary person," says
Murphy, who treated Olsen before the flight and discussed his case in
an interview with NJBIZ. Olsen himself was unavailable for comment.

Murphy, who chairs Deborah's five-member pulmonology department, says
Olsen's conditions put him at serious risk of suffering a collapsed
lung during space flight, a calamity that would likely have been fatal.
Murphy worked with Olsen for two years before the flight and helped him
get back into the Soyuz program after the entrepreneur washed out for
health reasons last year.

If you think of the lungs as sponges, says Murphy, emphysema makes the
holes in the sponges bigger than they should be. COPD, on the other
hand, narrows the airways and makes it more difficult to exhale. In
Olsen's case, the diseases are twin legacies of his 15 years as a
two-pack-a-day cigarette smoker, a habit he dropped some 30 years ago.

Olsen has shown a willingness to take risks in a business career that
has seen him start and sell Sensors Unlimited and Epitaxx, another
high-tech company. He actually sold Sensors twice, clearing a hefty
profit both times.

Olsen has also chased adventure in his personal life. He has climbed
Mt. Fuji in Japan, learned to ice skate and mastered ballroom dancing.
But his sudden urge to travel in space topped his previous ventures by
a wide margin.

In June 2003 Olsen agreed to pay $20 million to Space Adventures of
Arlington, Virginia, for the privilege of flying alongside a Russian
cosmonaut and an American astronaut on a voyage to the International
Space Station. That made him the third so-called space tourist to sign
up for such a mission.

Olsen, an electrical engineer and physicist by training, knew he would
have to clear some high hurdles to make it through the physical and
mental training required for the flight. He had been treating his
emphysema and COPD with drugs and a procedure that involved irritating
his chest wall with talc to make his lungs adhere more strongly to it
and lessen the risk that they might collapse.

In November 2003, Olsen sought out Murphy and asked him to help him
prepare for the space flight. "He knew that he had these conditions
and we talked about it," Murphy says. "He wanted to see whether he
could go forward."

Murphy tried at first to dissuade Olsen from making the flight. "I
was very concerned about it at the beginning," he says. But Olsen
"approached the thing as a scientist would approach it. He felt that
science could conquer the challenges, and he was right."

Murphy put Olsen on a new drug regimen, Spiriva for COPD, and Verapamil
for his arrhythmia, and had him undergo a surgical procedure called a
pleurodesis in February 2004. The procedure, he says, abrades the
surface of the lungs to make them better adhere to the chest wall.

Murphy says Olsen's form of emphysema, called bullous, leads to the
breakdown of the walls between air sacs, leaving large air spaces
behind and often causing air to leak from the lungs. Ruptures
associated with the disease left Olsen with a high risk of suffering
collapsed lungs if the cabin of the spacecraft had suffered any
decompression during flight.

That, says Murphy, is why he recommended the pleurodesis surgery last
year. He also counseled Olsen to avoid caffeine, alcohol and secondhand
smoke.

Olsen began training for his space mission with a physical regimen that
included walking, swimming and exercising in weightlessness. He also
set out to learn Russian and the technical skills required for a member
of the crew on the Soyuz spacecraft. His breathing problems "didn't
stop him from doing all of the things that he had to do," Murphy
says. "He was able to undergo the training program extremely well. He
was in superb condition."

But Olsen's blastoff plans ground to a halt in the spring of 2004
when doctors detected a nodule on his lung and feared that he had
developed cancer. Olsen's plans were put off for a year but when a
scan showed the nodule had cleared, Murphy was able to convince the
Russian doctors who manage the cosmonaut program that Olsen was sound
enough to fly.

Last May, Olsen resumed training and finally made it into orbit on
October 1. The greatest risk he faced was during the spacecraft's
reentry into the atmosphere, when pressure inside the spacecraft can
drop quickly. That meant some anxious moments for Olsen's medical
team on the ground. But Murphy says Olsen had been trained on how to
increase his supply of oxygen, and he was able to bolster his flow
during reentry when monitors showed he needed it.

Beyond proving that ex-smokers with compromised lungs can meet the
demands of space travel, Olsen's journey shows "it is possible for
the average patient to overcome some of the challenges they face,"
Murphy says. He and Dr. Richard Jennings, a NASA physician, have
written a paper on how Olsen fared in space and submitted it to a
medical journal.

"I would never have imagined someone with his condition traveling
into space," says Murphy. "His determination and bravery should be
an inspiration to many."

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