Not much to say about it, this is just cool:
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.
Good for you Professor.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:15 am
And, of course, he once appeared as an extra on ST:TNG.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Won the hand, as I recall.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Yea, I remember that too.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I believe he also appeared on “The Simpsons” and did a duet with Pink Floyd on the song “Keep Talking” from their “Division Bell” album.