Hawking to try weightlessness
2007-04-25 10:58
Miami - Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has spent his career pondering the nature of gravity from a wheelchair, is set to experience weightlessness during a "vomit comet" flight in Florida on Thursday.
The idea is to give "the world's expert on gravity the opportunity to experience zero gravity" said Peter Diamandis the chief executive of the Zero Gravity Corporation that flies the thrill ride.
Hawking, 65, the British author of the blockbuster A Brief History of Time, will be surrounded by a medical team on the padded plane as it flies a roller-coaster trajectory to produce periods of weightlessness.
The Cambridge professor, who is almost entirely paralysed, hopes his brief, weightless escape from his wheelchair will eventually lead to a 2009 voyage into outer space.
Hawking will get a free ride, according to the private company that usually charges thrill-seekers $3 500 for a spin on G-Force-One, also known as the vomit comet.
Gravity-free flying
The flight on a modified 35-passenger Boeing 727-200 will take off and land at NASA's space shuttle landing facility at Kennedy Space Centre, near Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Specially trained pilots will take the plane up at a 45-degree angle to about 10 000m before plunging to 2 500m to give the passengers about 30 seconds of gravity-free flying.
The aircraft usually undertakes these manoeuvres a dozen times, providing a total of about five minutes in different levels of diminished gravity - that of Mars, one-third the gravity of Earth; of the moon, with one-sixth Earth's gravity, and then the zero-gravity level of space.
The commercial flights, which typically last 90 minutes, are similar to those the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has conducted for 40 years to train astronauts.
Free falling
Zero G says the weightlessness experienced inside the plane is similar to a free fall in sky diving.
"In this case however, the body of the aircraft surrounds you and protects you from the on-rushing wind. At the end of the free-fall period, the aircraft also scoops you up and carries you back up to the top of the arc to begin the free fall process again."
On his 65th birthday in January, Hawking said he wanted to fly into space in 2009 aboard the Virgin Galactic spacecraft being developed by British entrepreneur Richard Branson for commercial suborbital flights.
The renowned cosmologist says he wants to encourage public interest in space flight, which he believes is critical to the future of humanity.
Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease.
He was diagnosed with the muscle-wasting motor neuron disease at the age of 22. He is in a wheelchair and speaks with the aid of a computer and voice synthesiser.
His work has centred on theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity, looking at the nature of such subjects as space-time, the "Big Bang" theory and black holes.