Stephen Hawking Weightless

British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking will experience weightlessness today on board a modified Boeing 727. His flight is expected to last one hour, dramatizing the potential values in space based civilization. Potential benefits weightlessness gives to individuals whose illnesses are made worse by the Earth's gravity. In application for the flight Professor Hawking wrote:

"I think that getting a portion of the human race off the ground is imperative for our future as a species. It will be difficult to do this with slow, expensive and risk-adverse government space programs. We need to engage the entrepreneurial engine that has reduced the cost of everything from airline tickets to personal computers. Personal spaceflight is the first mass market [outer-space venture] and zero-gravity flights are the first, most affordable step in that direction. I am hopeful that if we can engage this mass market, the cost of spaceflight will drop, and we will be able to gain access to the resources of space and also to spread humanity beyond the Earth."

Such people epitomize "carpe diem"!