Today is Thanksgiving, on which North Americans celebrate the gifts of life with family and friends. Thus, to all readers of the Periodic Tabloid, my very best “gobble, gobble.”

Once a person has started a company, or two, or three, and made a success of each, they may be in need of another challenge. And so it went for Greg Olsen, as chronicled in my last post.

What do you do when you’ve conquered the adventure of business? Go into space, of course.

The only existing way to accomplish such a thing as a private citizen is to buy a ticket on the Russian Soyuz for a trip to the International Space Station. A mere $20 million covered the fare for Greg, but expect it to cost you more now as the ruble has advanced against the dollar.

Greg launched on 1 October 2005, the third such person to do so, and spent a week in space. Last week he treated attendees of the latest Joseph Priestley Society gathering to his own and NASA videos of the trip.

Things one takes for granted—eating, drinking, typing on the computer, moving about—are dramatically different in a weightless environment. This is compellingly visible in video.

And of course the subject everyone thinks of but is too polite to ask about—going to the bathroom—was also addressed. According to Olsen, the main thing you need to know is that ”gravity doesn’t help you.”

But his most memorable remark was provoked by viewing the earth at sunset and seeing only the massive dark planet surrounded by an eggshell-thin skin: the atmosphere. It’s all that stands between us and oblivion, vividly driving home the point that we best take good care of it.

The Joseph Priestley Society last week heard from Greg Olsen. You might think it would be tricky to give a talk on two subjects as different sounding as (1) how to launch a high-tech start-up company and (2) how to take a trip on the space station. Greg managed it with skill and aplomb.

How do you start a company when you don’t know anything about starting companies? This was the question Greg asked himself a couple of decades ago, while working as an engineer for RCA. To emphasize the point: when asked by financiers for his business plan, Greg’s reply was, “What’s that?”

Luckily, lack of knowledge didn’t deter him, and he launched Epitaxx, a fiber optics company, just as this technology was imprinting itself worldwide. The venture was successful, and Greg sold it in 1990 for $12 million. The new owners sold it again in 1999 for $400 million. Good business to be in!

What do you do when you’ve just sold your company? Start another one, of course. In 1992 Greg launched Sensors Unlimited to make infrared sensing cameras. Success struck again and he sold this one in 2000 for $600 million. Nice profit.

Unhappily, the tech market crashed shortly thereafter. Ever crafty, Greg was able to buy back his company in 2002 for $6 million and then sell it again in 2005 for $60 million.

If you’re following this, you can see a very favorable pattern emerging. Alas, for all those who may want to give it a try, Greg thinks this period of great momentum for high-tech start-ups may have been an irreproducible event.

So what lessons does he offer? Here are a few, and then my next post will take up his space adventure:

• Treating your employees well is smart business.
• Don’t let money be the driver of bad decisions.
• Networking and partnerships amplify your impact.
• Don’t avoid mistakes; deal with them.

The term diversity conjures up many meanings: diversity of peoples (multiculturalism); diversity of ideas (useful in good decision making); diversification (of markets or financial assets).

Another connotation of diversity, perhaps less frequent in the common discourse, is biodiversity. The Convention on Biodiversity offers a broad definition because it encompasses sustaining all of the world’s approximately 1.75 million known species, including one sometimes overlooked: humans.

The CBD recognizes that it is the very existence of a diversity of life forms, habitats, and ecosystems that sustains life for all creatures. This vision then leads to a variety of programs that offer a model for sustainable development for the planet.

And at least one chemist is in on the fun. David Kingston, University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, is employing the biodiversity of Madagascar to search for natural products that could treat cancer or malaria. (See this press release for more information.) Fittingly, any royalties that eventually come from the research will be shared with Madagascar, thereby rewarding the country for preserving its biodiversity.

Who says doing science and doing good can’t occur at the same time!