Stephen Hawking Set to Fly Weightless

[babylonsister]

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OOFE1G0&show_article=1&catnum=0

Stephen Hawking Set to Fly Weightless
Apr 26 03:00 PM US/Eastern
By MIKE SCHNEIDER
Associated Press Writer


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - A jet carrying astrophysicist Stephen Hawking took off Thursday from the Kennedy Space Center on a flight to simulate zero gravity and make Hawking the first disabled person to experience weightlessness.

A nurse lifted Hawking's paralyzed arm so he could wave to news cameras before he boarded the jet. A lift carried his wheelchair aboard the plane, and then the wheelchair was returned to the ground.

"As you can imagine I'm very excited," Hawking told reporters before the flight. "I have been wheelchair-bound for almost four decades. The chance to float free in zero-g will be wonderful."

Hawking, a 65-year-old mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge who has done groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, suffers from the paralyzing disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Unable to talk or move his hands and legs, Hawking can only make tiny facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes, eyebrows, cheek and mouth. He uses a computer to talk for him in a synthesized voice by choosing words on a computer screen through an infrared sensor on a headpiece that detects motion in his cheek.

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[jwirr]

1. I am so glad that it is him and that he is getting this chance. Good man.

[babylonsister]

2. Me, too; that's why I posted this. I'm sure it will be thrilling! nt

[n2doc]

3. Here's pics and an update

A Long-Awaited Taste of Outer Space
Stephen Hawking Takes a Buoyant Ride on a Zero-Gravity Flight
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 27, 2007; Page A01


CAPE CANAVERAL, April 26 -- It might not seem like a brilliant idea, allowing a frail 65-year-old paralytic to float free from gravity aboard a rising and plunging roller-coaster stunt flight.

But who's to argue with Stephen Hawking?

The celebrated British astrophysicist and black-hole theorist, author of "A Brief History of Time," paralyzed by Lou Gehrig's disease and communicating largely through eye movements, has long wanted to visit outer space. Human survival depends on getting there, he says. An event here Thursday was described as his first improbable step.

Dressed in dark blue flight suits, Hawking and an entourage of caretakers boarded a Boeing 727 that roared out over the ocean and carved huge parabolic arcs in the sky, creating for passengers the "zero-gravity" effect of being in space.

While floating, Hawking, who has been in a wheelchair for nearly four decades, was spun twice -- pirouetting like a "gold-medal gymnast," a crew member said. Someone floated an apple in the air alongside him in an allusion to Isaac Newton, whose esteemed chair Hawking now holds at Cambridge.

As each of the 25-second spells of weightlessness ended -- as the plane headed to the bottom of each arc -- assistants ensured that Hawking was lowered to a mattress on the plane's floor as gravity kicked back in.

"It was amazing. . . . I could have gone on and on. Space, here I come," Hawking said afterward, once again sitting in his wheelchair, his "voice" the product of a computerized synthesizer to which he dictates using eye movements.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602709.html

[TZ]

4. Thanks for the pictures of this

That was great. NOBODY deserves this more than Stephen Hawking. Outside of his brilliant science I have always been fond of him since he appeared on Star Trek, The Next Gen..my favorite show. :)

[Random_Australian]

5. Stephen Hawking, completely awesome. Nothing more to say. n/t