Stephen Hawking in Zero Gravity

Free of
his wheelchair and tethered only to heart rate and blood pressure
monitors, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking yesterday fulfilled a dream of
floating weightless on a zero-gravity jet, a step he hopes leads to
further space adventures.

"It was amazing," Hawking said after the flight, which took off from the space shuttle's runway at the Kennedy Space Center.

The
British physicist Stephen Hawking has completed a zero-gravity flight
in a specially modified plane.

Professor Hawking, who suffers from motor neurone disease, was able
to float free, unrestricted by his paralysed muscles and his wheelchair.

The flight, which lasted more than an hour took a series of dramatic
dives, allowing the professor to experience 25-second spurts of
weightlessness.

The event could be a step closer to Hawking's goal of going into space.

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who has been confined to a wheelchair for most of his adult life, expects weightlessness to feel like "bliss" when he goes on a "zero-gravity" flight Thursday aboard a refitted jet.

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"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 Tuesday.

Hawking, 65, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, will be the first person with a disability to fly on the one of the flights offered by Zero Gravity Corp., a space tourism company.