Famed physicist takes first step toward space

The celebrated British astrophysicist and black-hole theorist, author of “A Brief History of Time,” paralyzed by Lou Gherig’s disease and communicating largely through eye twitches, has long wanted to visit 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 floating “zero-gravity” effect of being in outer space.

While levitating, 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 else floated an apple in the air alongside him in an allusion to Isaac Newton, whose esteemed chair Hawking now holds at Cambridge.

Once each of the 25-second spells of zero gravity ended—as the plane headed to the bottom of each arc—assistants ensured that the celebrated physicists’s body 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 slightly twisted in his wheelchair. His “voice” is actually the product of a synthesizer he dictates to using eye twitches.

Considered one of the giants among physicists pondering the beginnings of the universe, Hawking said he hopes to take a greater leap into the heavens in 2009 on a space plane being developed by Richard Branson’s company Virgin Galactic. Flights like those taken here Thursday—once known at NASA as “vomit comets”—have been used to accustom astronauts to space travel.

But Thursday’s flight was more than simply a step in one celebrity’s eccentric whimsy. It was a platform for Hawking’s strikingly bleak view of humanity’s future on Earth.

“Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers,” the synthesized voice announced in a statement before boarding. “I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space.”

The flight benefited a charity for Lou Gehrig’s disease, technically known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Easter Seals and two other groups. But Hawking said sending a message about what people with disabilities can achieve was only a small part of his motivation. He wants to encourage copycats—people who will say, ‘If he can do it, I can, too.”’

“I hope many people will follow in my path,” he said.

The flight took off about 2:30 p.m. here, reached a level of 25,000 feet and then began a series of climbs at 45 degrees and then dips at 30 degrees. In profile, the flight path looks like a roller-coaster ride. For about 25 seconds at the peak of each hill, passengers aboard are loosed from gravity and float. The effect is similar to a person on a roller coaster who feels a slight sense of levitation as it tops a rise. While crew members said they had hoped for one to three of the zero-gravity maneuvers, they completed eight.

For the company that now offers the microgravity flights to the general public for US$3,500 a ride—soon to be available through Sharper Image—the flight served as a publicity vehicle.

“The only thing I can compare it to is to flying in dreams,” said Peter Diamandis, chief executive and co-founder of Zero-G.

The danger for Hawking, his aides said, was not the sense of weightlessness but the extra gravity forces that came at the bottom of each descent. The extra force could have, for example, make it more difficult for him to breathe.

For safety, three physicians were aboard. To allow them to monitor his condition, a probe was affixed to his earlobe to test his blood oxygen, his chest carried EKG devices, and his arm bore a blood-pressure cuff.

During the free-floating portion of the flight, Hawking was left without the computer that translates his eye twitches into his synthesized voice. He was to communicate yes by raising his eyebrows and no by pulling his mouth to one side.

The fears proved unwarranted.

After one zero-gravity ride, crew members asked if he want to go again. He dramatically stretched his eyebrows upward in an apparently emphatic yes.

“He was grinning the entire time,” Diamandis said.

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