Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says he wants to undertake a zero-gravity flight aboard an aircraft this year as a precursor to a journey into space.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year I\u2019m planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009,\u201d he was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper.<\/p>\n
Hawking, 65, has said he hopes to travel on British businessman Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Galactic service, which is scheduled to launch in 2009. The service will charge space tourists about $US200,000 ($A257,000) for a two-hour suborbital trip 140 km above the Earth.<\/p>\n
Branson was keen to help the scientist realise his dream of space flight, Virgin Galactic spokesman Stephen Attenborough said.<\/p>\n
\u201cRichard is very determined that if we can possibly make this happen, then it should,\u201d Attenborough said.<\/p>\n
He said the company had not discussed the issue of payment with Hawking.<\/p>\n
One of the best-known theoretical physicists of his generation, Hawking gained fame with the best-selling book A Brief History of Time.<\/p>\n
The scientist, who uses a wheelchair and communicates with the help of a computer because he suffers from a neurological disorder called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, has done groundbreaking research on black holes and the origins of the universe, proposing that space and time have no beginning and no end.<\/p>\n
Hawking has warned that the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there\u2019s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
See you in orbit, Dr. Hawking!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From Yahoo News: Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says he wants to undertake a zero-gravity flight aboard an aircraft this year as a precursor to a journey into space. \u201cThis year I\u2019m planning a zero-gravity flight and to go into space in 2009,\u201d he was quoted as saying in The Daily Telegraph newspaper. Hawking, 65, has said [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52327,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/52327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}