CAPE CANAVERAL - Teachers
will experience the weightlessness of space in a weekend of parabolic flights
from Kennedy Space Center during a pilot program that could bring commercial
flights to the shuttle landing strip.
Zero-G's proposal was one
of a handful of responses to KSC's request for ideas on using the landing
facility. NASA made the announcement Friday.
"We're hoping this
will lead to a regular thing," Zero-G spokesman Noah McMahon said.
"We would actually love to be a permanent resident at the Kennedy Space
Center."
The list of teachers who
will be flying Nov. 5-6 is not complete. They will conduct experiments on the
four planned flights and take inspiration back to their classrooms, McMahon
said.
NASA also is negotiating
with other organizations that submitted proposals to use the Shuttle Landing
Facility, said Jim Ball, spaceport development manager at KSC.
For now, the agency is
trying to demonstrate that it's possible to open its facilities to non-NASA
users, he said.
The NASA spaceships that
come after the shuttles won't use the runway. They are expected to land using
parachutes, probably in California.
Zero Gravity Corp. mostly
flies out of its Fort Lauderdale headquarters but has a Nov. 20 flight
scheduled from Titusville. A flight costs $3,750 and creates short periods of
lunar gravity, Martian gravity and zero gravity during a series of
bell-curve-shaped ascents and descents.
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