LE BOURGET, France: What child has not dreamed of breaking free from gravity's chains and floating, weightless, above Earth's surface? That fantasy, long-since dismissed in the adult mind as a violation of Nature, came true this week for a small group of scientists, French parliamentarians and journalists. The lucky few experienced a dozen 30-second episodes of pure, head-spinning zero-gravity aboard an Airbus A300, owned by French aeronautics firm Novespace and run by France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES). Once available only to astronauts and scientists, the weightless experience is about to become a bit more accessible, provided you've got the cash. Novespace managing director and ex-astronaut Jean-Francois Clervoy announced Tuesday that he plans to offer commercial flights, including one before the end of this year. The price tag – provisionally set at 4,000 euros ($5,700) – has yet to be finalized, but Clervoy envisions half-a-dozen sorties a year with 40 passengers each starting in 2012. It would be only the third such commercial service in the world, along with one in the United States and one in Russia. To understand how a so-called parabolic flight works, think roller-coaster. Ahead of each half-minute dose of weightless nirvana, the jumbojet sticks its nose in the air at a 47 degree angle and climbs, climbs, climbs. This is when those on board – mostly slumped against the padded floor and sides of the emptied fuselage – experience “hyper-G”, a sharp intensification of gravity. At it's maximum, the G-force reaches 1.8, enough to make it feel as if one's limbs have turned to lead. Try to imagine, then, a gravitational force of 10G, which is what fighter pilots endure during certain death-defying manoeuvres. Since they began in 1997, CNES's Airbus zero-G flights have been reserved for experiments, along with the odd invited passenger.
