Stephen Hawking will 'taste' weightlessness

The British cosmologist, famous for his best-selling " Time History " and wheelchair life, will take the first step on the journey to space by carrying a weightless flight into next month.

On April 26, Hawking will roll onto Zero Gravity's special Boeing 727-200 to experience a weightless feeling at a height of 10,000 meters - the feeling that he has devoted his life to research.

Such a flight normally costs $ 3,500, but will be free with Hawking. Peter H. Diamandis, director of Zero G program, said: "The idea of ​​giving the world's top expert the opportunity to experience weightlessness" is irresistible.

(Photo: Techshout.com) Hawking once spoke on his 65th birthday, held last month, that he hoped to attend a longer, higher flight in 2009 on a spaceship. by Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic company . The company is expected to bring 6 guests to a height of 70 miles.

Diamandis, a space entrepreneur, who created the $ 10 million Ansari X award to give the world's first private spaceship (prize from which Branson's spacecraft was born), said he gave Hawking this trip after hearing him express enthusiasm for space flights.

Branson also decided to pay out of pocket to cover Hawking's ticket to space - a flight that would normally cost about $ 200,000.

"He is one of the greatest physicists of all time," said Virgin Galactic president.

Hawking said he wants to encourage public interest in space flights, which he believes is vital to the future of mankind.

"I also want to show that people are not necessarily limited by physical obstacles and they are not mentally handicapped."

Last summer, at a press conference in Hong Kong, Hawking claimed that human survival would depend on conquering the solar system and beyond.

SW Hawking was born in 1942. In his personal life, he had many misfortunes. In 1985, he suffered from pneumonia and after opening the trachea, Hawking lost his ability to pronounce. Previously, a neurological paralysis (ALS) had attached him to the trolley. Hawking only had to work and communicate with people with a computer and a speech synthesizer built into the chair. However, all these misfortunes do not collapse the will of the genius physicist. Currently he is a professor at Cambridge University (England), in the position that Newton was formerly, and then PAM Dirac, responsible. He specializes in the study of general relativity. The results obtained with George Ellis, Roger Penrose, . and especially the detection of the black holes' radiation ability led Hawking to the world's most famous physicists.

T. An