Famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking is scheduled to take a ride on the vomit comet, and experience a bit of what it’s like to fly in zero gravity.
He’ll be flying aboard a specially configured Boeing 727 aircraft that travels a curving parabolic path. At the top part of each “hump”, passengers on board the plane will enjoy 25 seconds of weightlessness. Then the plane pulls out of the dive, and passengers experience 1.8 times the force of gravity. Then the plane performs the maneuver all over again.
Stephen Hawking has long been enthusiastic about human spaceflight, and has always wanted a chance to fly in space – maybe on Virgin Galactic’s upcoming space plane. Let’s see if he’s still got the stomach for it after this experience. The $3,750 fee for the trip is being provided by the US firm Zero Gravity.
Original Source: BBC Article