The world’s first disabled person to experience zero gravity

It’s only fitting that that person is Prof Stephen Hawking, 65, the world’s leading expert on gravity. On 26th April 2007 he went up on a specially modified plane (vomit comets) that flew a parabolic flight 2 hours over the Atlantic from the space shuttle’s runway at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the first time 40 years, he moved freely beyond his wheelchair. The usual fee of of USD3,750 for 10-15 plunges was waived. The flight he was on plunged 8 times, meaning he experienced zero gravity eight times in 4 minutes, in 25-second spurts.

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His reasons for doing it included his wish to encourage public interest in space.

His next goal? To go up on one of Richard Branson’s suborbital Virgin Galactic flights which is supposed to start operations in 2009. Branson will own and operate at least 5 spaceships and 2 mother ships, and if you can afford to pay for the USD190,000 ticket, you can be carried to an altitude of 140km on sub-orbital space flights. Much cheaper than the USD20 million for a real space flight, but still way too expensive for the rest of us.

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