Stephen Hawking Gets Zero-G Ride

One of nature’s great cruelties is imprisoning a normally functioning human mind in a broken body. For more than forty years, Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the brightest astro-physicists to draw breath, has been trapped in a body suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Unable to walk or speak without the aid of a computer, he continues to work as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Sir Isaac Newton’s old chair. Yesterday, he got a ride on a zero-g airplane freeing him from the gravity that keeps him bound to a wheelchair on earth.

The plane was the G-Force One that NASA uses to introduce astronauts to weightlessness, known by space travelers as the "Vomit Comet." By flying in parabolic loops, the plane manages to create a weightless environment without actually leaving the earth’s atmosphere. From 9,600 meters up, it dives to 7,200 and in those 2.4 kilometers, everything floats just like in orbit. Eight dives gave the professor weightlessness for about 25 seconds per dive.

Professor Hawking had a full medical team on board with him. Dr. Edwin Chilvers, Hawking’s personal physician, oversaw his patient’s flight with a mini-intensive care unit on board just in case. He anticipated everything and nothing, he said. He admitted somewhat modestly, “I think my physiological parameters were in worse shape than Stephen’s.”

This was no mere joy ride, although there was no end of joy on the professor’s face during the flight. “It’s a test to see how well he can handle the g-forces that would be necessary in order to leave the atmosphere,” said Sam Blackburn, Hawking’s assistant. “That is very much one of the major purposes of this flight.” The professor is scheduled to take a suborbital flight on Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism service in 2009.

“I think life on Earth is at an increased risk of being wiped out by disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war or a genetically engineered virus or other dangers,” Professor Hawking said before the flight. “I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space.” While manned scientific missions in space are pointless (robotic probes are more durable, cheaper and longer-lived), the professor is right in the very long-term. In the very short-term, there's nothing bad about a dream coming true, if only for 25 seconds at a time.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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