Friday Fun Stuff--Physicist in Space!

British physicist Stephen Hawking is assisted as he floats during a ZERO-G flight aboard a modified Boeing 727 after taking off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, April 26, 2007. (Zero-Gravity Corporation/Handout./Reuters)

Okay, this is pretty cool. From MSNBC News:

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — World-famous physicist Stephen Hawking experienced eight rounds of weightlessness on Thursday during a better-than-expected airplane flight that he saw as the first step toward a trip in space.

"It was amazing," Hawking told reporters afterward, using his well-known computerized voice. "The zero-G part was wonderful, and the high-G part was no problem. I could have gone on and on.

"Space, here I come," he said.

Hawking's host, Zero Gravity Corp. co-founder and chief executive officer Peter Diamandis, said before the flight that he'd claim success if Hawking had just a single half-minute float in weightlessness aboard the company's specially modified Boeing 727 jet. It turned out that Hawking took eight turns with ease.

"He would have flown more if we let him," said Noah McMahon, one of Hawking's coaches as well as Zero Gravity's chief marketing officer. "He was all smiles all the time."

Zero Gravity had originally planned to bring Hawking back to NASA's Shuttle Landing Facility here after six ups-and-downs. "We negotiated and agreed to do two more," Diamandis told reporters jokingly. After the landing, Hawking's fellow fliers gave him a round of applause.

In this handout photo provided by Zero Gravity Corp., astrophysicist Stephen Hawking floats on a zero-gravity jet, Thursday, April 26, 2007. The modified jet carrying Hawking, a handful of his physicians and nurses, and dozens of others first flew up to 24,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean off Florida. Nurses lifted Hawking and carried him to the front of the jet, where they placed him on his back atop a special foam pillow. The plane made a total of eight parabolic dips, including two during which Hawking made two weightless flips like 'a gold-medal gymnast,' said Peter Diamandis, chairman of Zero Gravity Corp., the company that owns the jet. (AP Photo/Zero Gravity Corp.)

Hawking is one of the globe's best-known scientists — not only because of his best-selling works on the mysteries of black holes and the origins of the universe, but also because of his increasing disability due to a degenerative nerve disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He is almost completely paralyzed and can communicate only via facial gestures and a gesture-controlled computer system.

Thursday's flight served an initial test run to see if Hawking had the "Right Stuff" for an even more ambitious journey: a rocket-powered rise to the edge of outer space, perhaps aboard the spaceship now being developed for Virgin Galactic. That craft is due to enter service in 2009 or so, and taking such a flight would check off what Hawking has said is his "next goal."

"I have long wanted to go into space, and the zero-gravity flight is the first step toward space travel," he said before the flight.

I would say that Hawkin is well on his way to taking a trip into space. Then again, you could say that Hawkin has already been in space before--playing poker with Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Commander Data onthe U.S.S. Enterprise: