When Stephen Hawking Took 'First Step' Towards Space Travel And Ditched Wheelchair To Feel Weightlessness

It's Stephen Hawking's 80th birth anniversary on January 8, 2022.

Stephen Hawking inside a ZeroG flight in April 2007 | Photo: NASA

New Delhi: Stephen Hawking would have turned 80 today. The scientist who sought to explain the universe to the world died four years ago, leaving behind a rich legacy — his theories that revolutionised modern physics and his books that opened the big, vast universe to millions of readers across the world. 

A debilitating and irreversible neuromuscular disorder had left Hawking immobile and confined to a wheelchair for most of his life. And having lost his speech after a tracheotomy in 1985 following a bout of pneumonia, the scientists would speak with the help of a computer-controlled voice synthesiser.

The adversities, however, could not stop him from scaling heights.

The renowned scientist believed the human race did not have a future if it didn’t go to space.

While space tourism took off only in 2021, Hawking had said way back that there should be public interest in space. As a “first step” towards it, he took a zero-gravity flight in April 2007, which gave him a chance to taste the weightlessness of space.

Hawking was 65 years old at the time. 

He took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in a specially modified jet that gave passengers an experience of zero gravity. The flight lasted around two hours.

'Earth At An Ever-Increasing Risk Of Being Wiped Out'

An April 27, 2007 report in Reuters said how Hawking acknowledged before the flight that experiencing weightlessness would be a sweet relief even if it was for a few seconds.

“I have been wheelchair-bound for almost four decades and the chance to float free in zero G will be wonderful,” he had said at a press conference before the flight.

Hawking also said life on Earth was at an “ever-increasing risk of being wiped out” — either by a disaster such as “sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus” or other dangers.

“I therefore want to encourage public interest in space. A zero-gravity flight is the first step towards space travel,” he told Reuters. 

Hawking, who suffered from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, also noted that his flight would prove “everybody can participate in this type of experience”.

The ride, which normally cost $3,500 then, was sponsored by Florida-based Zero Gravity Corp that operates a commercial zero-gravity service.

To mark the birth anniversary of the renowned British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Google has created an animated doodle with a narration in Hawking’s computer-generated voice used with permission from his estate. The two-and-a-half-minute-long video outlines his work that gives a message of hope.