Foo - I stand in awe of THIS spirit of adventure!

Dr. Stephen Hawking, you rock. And you go, boy! :)

And, Richard Branson, a jewel in your crown, brothah. :)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070301/ap_on_sc/stephen_hawking

Trust me, Foo'ers. This takes a hell of a lot of courage on Hawking's part (and that of his wife and his caregivers). I so know that this is not a trivial endeavor for him. I, for one, stand in full support, respect, and admiration of his strong spirit of adventure and curiosity. :beer: :)

It's a personal thing, but I will be bidding on one of the two "charity" seats on the weightless flight, not that I have any chance of winning one....

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Hawking has been a big proponent of manned space travel for a long time. I'm not surprised he's doing this, other than I'm sure it will be physically difficult for him.

As for Branson...meh. He mostly strikes me as an attention addict. Giving away a ride to a high profile figure is advertising as much as anything. And Virgin Galactic isn't particularly impressive when it comes right down to it.

Hawking has always stood as one of the few people that inspires awe in me. The guy is simply amazing. Branson, not so much awe as admiration. He's the ultimate capitalist, he finds and builds a market, provides good service to his customers, has a hell of a good time, and apologizes to no one.

Not to take anything away from Dr. Hawking, but why is this such a courageous thing?

Zero G is pretty cool, but I don't see the "threat" here. I'm sure there will be some extra stuff his handlers and the aircraft crew will need to attend to, and possibly the 1.8G will have some effect, but overall, it's a pretty benign evolution.

Now... lots of people get airsick doing positive to negative or zero G transitions, so that may be a consideration.

The space flight? I don't see Dr. Hawking as any more daring than any other passenger assuming the risk of being one of the first to take one of these flights. Again, he'll have some special needs to consider, but I suspect this flight will be much like a commercial airliner except for the altitude. By the time any operator gets a license there'll be so many safety and other restrictions the adventure will be largely gone; especially for $200K!!

Anyway, maybe I'm jaded having spent time at up to 7.5Gs and -2Gs and at 0G.

Kewl for you Mr. Hawking.


That's in my state...if they make it a public event, maybe I'll head over and watch first hand. :)