In every person's life, there are important decisions to make. Shall I stay at the party and hook up with that chick who's been eyeing me all night, or shall I go home to my waiting girlfriend? Shall I inject the experimental group with 0.1 M solution or 3 M solution? Would I rather spend my entire life within a vertical range of a few miles, or would I like to go to space?
We weigh the options carefully, considering the costs and benefits, and either end up making the logical choice, or, in a process completely baffling to behavioral economists and psychologists, do whatever the hell we feel like.
Taking the ""whatever I feel like"" approach, Stephen Hawking, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, and the world's most famous physicist since Albert Einstein, has finally found an answer to the question of space: He's going to touch the sky.
Well, almost.
You see, only a select few people are awarded the privilege to escape the Earth's atmosphere. NASA tends to select the most physically and intellectually fit people it can from the Air Force's test pilot program, although, with the selection of Lisa Nowak—the astronaut who planned to murder one of her coworkers over a romantic relationship gone sour—the requirement of sanity appears to have been recently waived.
And whereas Hawking is probably the most mentally fit of our species at the moment, his physical condition is slightly lacking—Lou Gehrig's disease has almost completely paralyzed him. He communicates through eye movements translated by a computer—so a true escape from the atmosphere is slightly out of the question, at least in the short run.
Hawking hasn't been deterred by regulations, however. On April 26, he will depart from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in a modified Boeing 727 that flies in parabolic arcs, giving passengers snippets of both weightlessness and twice normal gravity. Nicknamed ""The Vomit Comet,"" the plane is also used for astronaut training and is available to tourists and thrill seekers for the paltry sum of $3,750 per flight.
If all goes well, and he isn't frightened off by the sensation of your insides floating around, Hawking plans to travel to space with Virgin Galactic as early as 2009.
Richard Branson, who owns the Virgin companies and has taken great interest in space tourism, has already announced that he will be happy to pick up the estimated $200,000 bill for the trip and may accompany him personally.
Now, I don't want to be a spoilsport, especially to a renowned scientist. I'll be the first to congratulate Hawking on the rather large set of balls he has to even take on the Vomit Comet in a wheelchair. However, I'm just a tad bit worried about survival. Our bodies are very specifically designed for a small range of gravitational acceleration. While astronauts and others may be able to tolerate the massive stress placed upon their bodies by the acceleration—or lack thereof—I would really hate to see Hawking injured pursuing his dream.
Any negative news would also be very hard on the space tourism companies that have been slowly sprouting up around the country. With movies such as ""Apollo 13"" and the Discovery space shuttle disaster still pervading the social conciousness, space is looked upon with a skeptical eye.
So what does Hawking have to say for himself? Very little, in fact. Given the nature of his condition, it is very difficult for him to be interviewed in a traditional manner. Instead, he releases statements anticipating potential questions journalists might have. This time, however, he has remained tight-lipped and has only released brief comments to the media.
""As someone who has studied gravity and black holes all of my life, I am excited to experience first hand weightlessness and a zero-gravity environment,"" Hawking said in a press statement.
Hawking has thrown out the risks and costs, and decided he doesn't care what happens, as long as he gets the chance to pursue his dream.
Keaton Miller is a junior majoring in math and economics. He'd like to go into space, but the Vomit Comet makes him a bit... queasy. Therefore, he'll wait until they have some sort of cool-sounding technology—like inertial compensators, or gravitational pattern buffers—before he goes any higher than the 747's cruising altitude. Rocket him a message at keatonmiller@wisc.edu
