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Stephen Hawking To Escape Gravity
For a few seconds on Thursday, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking expects to feel the exhilaration of escaping his paralysis and floating free in zero gravity.
"For someone like me whose muscles don't work very well, it will be bliss to be weightless," Hawking told The Associated Press in an interview ahead of his planned zero gravity flight.
Hawking, a mathematics professor at the University of Cambridge who has done groundbreaking work on black holes and the origins of the universe, has the paralyzing disease ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
The 65-year-old was set Thursday to become the first person with a disability to experience the Zero Gravity Corp. flight.
The question for Reason readers? Will Hawking spend his time among celestial bodies thinking of terrestrial bodies? Back in April 2002, Gregory Benford wrote a stunning, moving profile of his friend Hawking, who had Marilyn Monroe on his mind:
Although I had been here before, I was again struck that a man who had suffered such an agonizing physical decline had on his walls several large posters of a person very nearly his opposite: Marilyn Monroe. I mentioned her, and Stephen responded instantly, tapping one-handed on his keyboard, so that soon his transduced voice replied, "Yes, she's wonderful. Cosmological. I wanted to put a picture of her in my latest book [The Universe in a Nutshell], as a celestial object." I remarked that to me the book was like a French Impressionist painting of a cow, meant to give a glancing essence, not the real, smelly animal. Few would care to savor the details. Stephen took off from this to discuss some ideas currently booting around the physics community about the origin of the universe, the moment just after the Big Bang.
Todd Rundgren song about Hawking here.
Hawking sounding like a jackass about man despoiling the planet here.
Reason's Katherine Mangu-Ward on the future of space tourism here.
ed|4.26.07 @ 9:58AM|#
People routinely barf on the "vomit comet." Someone is going to be red-faced if Hawking chokes to death on his own puke. Oops.
Ron Hardin|4.26.07 @ 10:04AM|#
Bored light airplane pilots experience weightlessness all the
time. Put a ball of paper on the instrument panel and push over
until it floats up in front of you. Together with years of dirt
particles the first time you do it.
Or you can do it in any number of interesting maneuvers in
addition, but they tend to be distracting from the effect, which is
overrated.
Or you can jump off a table in your backyard.
|4.26.07 @ 10:15AM|#
"I remarked that to me the book was like a French Impressionist
painting of a cow, meant to give a glancing essence, not the real,
smelly animal."
Sounds like someone needs to sit through a couple of viewings of
"Zoo."
Seriously, Gregory Benford sounds like the guy who put the pompous
ass in "Pompous Ass."
|4.26.07 @ 10:33AM|#
biologist,
Damn your quick little handeses! I thus link to my favorite
MC Hawking classic, "What We Need More of
is Science".
Guy Montag|4.26.07 @ 10:37AM|#
>i>"Yes, she's wonderful. Cosmological. I wanted to put a
picture of her in my latest book [The Universe in a Nutshell], as a
celestial object."
She blinded him with cleavage.
|4.26.07 @ 12:47PM|#
It is remarkable to me that this guy is still alive, but I'm no expert regarding ALS.
Zomby Woof|4.26.07 @ 12:52PM|#
put me down for 100 shares of "Hawking'll be the first man to
die in orbit"
quite the feat, really
only to be surpassed by "the first man to die outside of our
gravity well altogether"
a crippled old math genius kacking in orbit would be a big
crossover hit (both the highbrow and lowbrow would tune in)
think of the ratings!
Brian Sorgatz|4.26.07 @ 12:58PM|#
The most interesting answer to the Hawking-Monroe question would come from Camille Paglia. (Close second place: Steven Pinker).
dmar|4.26.07 @ 12:58PM|#
Good lord you're a jackass Gillespie. This even after you got
thoroughly owned in your original post where you shat on Hawking
because you detected a hint of environmentalism.
I don't see how spreading the human race to other planets in case
of a disaster like a all-life-ending meteor impact is being a
jackass.
Xanthippas|4.26.07 @ 2:00PM|#
Benford and Hawking, two of my heroes, mentioned in one column?
My mind delights! I didn't know Benford wrote anything for Reason,
and now I can look forward to going back and reading some of his
old articles.
Alas, I have to agree with dmar about the jackass who wrote this
particular post. I'm really not sure what offends the delicate
libertarian sensibility about the suggestion that shooting off to
another planet after befouling this one is a good idea. After all,
Hawking's approach permits almost unlimited despoilation of the
planet in the name of economic freedom. Industry can pillage the
planet and nerds like us get space travel...everybody's happy,
right?
Gray Ghost|4.26.07 @ 2:14PM|#
I'm really not sure what offends the delicate libertarian
sensibility about the suggestion that shooting off to another
planet after befouling this one is a good idea.
As the bumper sticker says, "Earth First! We'll strip-mine the
other planets later..."
Agree with the poster who thought that taking an ALS patient on a
"vomit comet" may not be the best idea...
|4.26.07 @ 2:26PM|#
only to be surpassed by "the first man to die outside of our
gravity well altogether"
I'm surprised there haven't been any rich terminally ill people who
offered to pay for a one-man probe with a limited supply of oxygen,
so that they could be first to die in space.
|4.26.07 @ 2:54PM|#
crimethink, I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say dying is probably cold, lonely, and dark enough even in a warm bed surrounded by family.
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