CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Renowned theoretical
physicist Stephen
Hawking, who authored the best-selling book, "A Brief History of Time,''
soon will experience a brief history with weightlessness.
Hawking, who uses a
wheelchair and is almost completely paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,
or Lou Gehrig's disease, plans to go on a weightless flight on April 26,
officials at the flight operator said Thursday.
The flight, operated by Zero Gravity
Corporation, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based space tourism and entertainment company,
will take off and return to a landing
strip at the Kennedy Space Center.
"As someone who has studied
gravity and black holes all of
my life, I am excited to experience first hand weightlessness and a
zero-gravity environment,'' Hawking said in a statement.
The modified Boeing 727
generally soars to 32,000 feet at a sharp angle and then plunges 8,000 feet so
passengers can experience 25-second snippets of zero gravity during the
descent. As the plane climbs, passengers experience 25 seconds of being pushed
down hard, as they feel 1.8 times the normal pull of the Earth.
Zero Gravity CEO Peter
Diamandis said assistants will be onboard to help Hawking.
"The key thing here is that
weightless and personal spaceflight is something available to everyone, even
someone like Prof. Hawking,'' Diamandis told The Associated Press. "This
something that almost everyone can now experience.''
Zero Gravity will pick up
the bill, which normally is $3,750. The company also plans to have two seats on
the flight auctioned off by two charities.
The company began offering
the flights in 2004.
Last year, Hawking publicly
spoke of his desire to go into space and made an appeal to Sir Richard Branson,
whose company, Virgin
Galactic, is building a suborbital spaceship that could be flying
passengers as early as 2009.
Branson has decided he will
personally finance Hawking's ticket into space -- a flight that would normally
cost $200,000.
"He's one of the greatest
physicists of all time,'' Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn told AP
earlier this year.
advertisement
