Thursday, April 26, 2007

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hawking takes zero-gravity flight

re: "British physicist Stephen Hawking has completed a zero-gravity flight in a specially modified plane.
Professor Hawking, who suffers from motor neurone disease, was able to float free, unrestricted by his paralysed muscles and his wheelchair. /The flight, which lasted more than an hour took a series of dramatic dives, allowing the professor to experience 25-second spurts of weightlessness...[snip]...US firm Zero Gravity normally charges a fee of $3,750 (£1,915) for its passengers, but that fee was waived for the Cambridge physicist. /He was not given many years to live when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in the 1960s, aged 22...[snip]... He has a reservation for a sub-orbital flight with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture, scheduled to begin service in 2009...[snip]...Virgin Galactic will own and operate at least five spaceships and two mother ships, and will charge £100,000 ($190,000) to carry passengers to an altitude of about 140km on sub-orbital space flights..."...

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