26 April 2007
Hawking survives Vomit Comet
That is such a relief. He did 8 of the free-fall parabolas, grinning the whole time. His motivation? Not just release from his everyday hum-drum life of a preeminent mathematician / theoretical physicist at Cambridge University, probably not even release from his wheelchair and MS, but to "encourage public interest in space". Life on Earth he says, is at risk from global warming and other threats, and "the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space."
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Hi ZP. I too loved seeing the pic of Hawking floating free, probably one of the greatest thrills of his lifetime (I am in fact green with envy). Wonder if he gained any new insights on the nature of time in the process? :-)
More seriously, Hawkins is right, in that our satellites and other activities in space, plus all the R&D that plug into and spin off of it, have been and will be vital to our understanding of, and coping with, environmental changes and problems. Unfortunately, NASA et. al. do a pretty poor job of explaining the linkages... :-(
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