More Tourists Trying Zero Gravity Flights

Oct. 17, 2006 — Science teacher Mike Hickey has long understood the difference between mass and weight. Now, floating in zero gravity, he doesn't just understand it, he feels it.

The 54-year-old Cleveland high school teacher is giggling like a middle-schooler with a crush: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I still have mass. No weight."

Hickey, all 197 pounds of him, is drifting along with 38 other teachers inside a specially modified jet diving over the Atlantic Ocean.

Zero gravity, once an exclusive playground for astronauts and select scientists, is no longer out of reach to everyday people. Millionaires, doctors, and teachers are feeling the fleeting freedom of weightlessness. The price is under $4,000 for nearly five minutes in zero-G.

"It's the wave of the future," said Syracuse University public administration and space policy professor W. Henry Lambright. "It's part of the maturity of the space program."

In the more than 40 years of zero-gravity flights, beginning with astronauts, the world's two largest space agencies have flown thousands of scientists, engineers, astronauts, and even the cast and crew of the movie Apollo 13, said Alan Ladwig, former NASA associate administrator.

Ladwig, now Washington space operations chief for Northrop Grumman Corp., estimates 50,000 people may have flown in zero gravity.

Five planes create zero-G conditions. NASA has one. The European Space Agency has one. The Russians have one. Two are commercially operated in the United States by Zero Gravity Corp. of Dania Beach, Fla.

Besides Zero Gravity Corp., there are at least three other companies that sell zero-G flights to tourists, including Novespace of France, Space Adventures Ltd. of Virginia, and Incredible Adventures Inc. of Florida. Those companies must arrange for a jet either from Zero Gravity Corp. or the European or Russian space agencies.

In late September, French doctors took a patient in a European plane, operated by Novespace, for the world's first human operation in zero gravity — removal of a cyst from a man's arm.

This month NASA asked college students to apply for the chance to fly in zero and lunar gravity — and do experiments — on NASA's specially equipped jet.

The planes soar to 32,000 feet at a sharp angle and then plunge 8,000 feet so passengers can experience 25-second snippets of zero gravity during the descent. As the plane climbs, passengers experience 25 seconds of being pushed down hard, as they feel 1.8 times the normal pull of the Earth.

NASA's first zero-gravity jet, now retired, was dubbed the "vomit comet." The newer commercial versions, geared more toward tourists, help passengers keep breakfasts down even as they float up.

Those planes have about 35 seats in the rear for takeoff and landing and a padded play area in the middle where fliers float and frolic during weightless descent periods or lie pushed to the floor during super-gravity ascents.

In several flights that began in June, nearly 250 science teachers experienced weightlessness on Zero Gravity Corp.'s modified Boeing 727, which is usually aimed at private tourists willing to pay $3,750 a head for the experience. Their trips, complete with a boarding pass and Transportation Security Administration screenings, were paid for by aerospace company Northrop Grumman to encourage the teaching of science.

On Hickey's two-hour, six-minute flight, out of Washington Dulles International Airport on an early autumn morning, the teachers felt Martian gravity (one-third of Earth's) once, lunar gravity (one-sixth of Earth's) four times, and zero gravity 11 times. Each of those gravity breaks produced bursts of laughter and applause, teachers bouncing off the plane's walls and ceilings.

"It was amazing, that was so amazing," said Tracy Cindric, a high school science teacher from Gahanna, Ohio. Her flight experiment partner, Hickey, called the experience "an out-of-body thing."

And that sensation is what people are looking for.

So far, about 3,000 zero-gravity tourists have paid to fly with Zero Gravity Corp., said chief executive officer Peter Diamandis. He hopes to eventually fly 10,000 people a year.

The up-and-down ride can turn the stomachs of a few fliers, but flight planners go to great lengths to minimize motion sickness, said Zero Gravity's chief marketing officer and preflight briefer Noah McMahon. He said maybe three of the last 400 fliers threw up, but on Hickey's flight, only one person did.