| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Stephen Hawking Is Going to the Edge of Space
Stephen Hawking has spent decades theorizing about the Universe. His thinking on black holes, quantum gravity, quantum mechanics, and a long list of other topics, has helped shaped our understanding of the cosmos. Now it looks like the man who has spent most of his adult life bound to a wheel-chair will travel to the edge of space.
In an interview with Good Morning Britain, Hawking said “Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately.” Hawking added that his “three children have brought me great joy—and I can tell you what will make me happy, to travel in space.”
Stephen Hawking is one of the premier physicists and theorists of our time. Here he is being presented by his daughter Lucy Hawking at the lecture he gave for NASA’s 50th anniversary. Credit: NASA/Paul Alers
It’s all thanks to Richard Branson and his VSS Unity spaceship, which is still under development by The Spaceship Company. The Unity is designed to launch not from a rocket pad, but from underneath a carrier aircraft. By eliminating enormously expensive rocket launches from the whole endeavour, Branson hopes to make space more accessible to more people.
Virgin Spaceship Unity (VSS Unity) glides for the first time after being released from Virgin Mothership Eve (VMS Eve) over the Mojave Desert on 3rd, December 2016. Image: Virgin Galactic
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft is carried to an altitude of about 50,000 feet, then released from its carrier aircraft. Its rocket fires for about 1 minute, which accelerates the craft to three-and-a-half times the speed of sound, then is shut off. Then, according to Virgin Galactic, passengers will experience a “dramatic transition to silence and to true weightlessness.”
As the video shows, the spacecraft is still in glide testing phase, where it is carried to altitude, then released. There is no rocket burn, and the craft glides down and lands at its base.
This spaceflight won’t be Hawking’s first experience with weightlessness, however. To celebrate his 65th birthday, Hawking travelled on board Zero Gravity Corp’s modified Boeing 727 in 2007. At the time, that zero-g flight was in preparation for a trip into sub-orbital space with Virgin Galactic in 2009. But the development of Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft has suffered setbacks, and the 2009 date was not attainable.
Hawking has experienced zero gravity before, when he flew on Zero Gravity Corp’s modified Boeing 727 in 2007. Image: By Jim Campbell/Aero-News Network – http://www.flickr.com/photos/39735679@N00/475109138/ / http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=31873, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3655144
Virgin Galactic’s stated aim is to “democratize space,” albeit at a cost of US $250,000 per person. But somehow I doubt that Hawking will be paying. If anyone has earned a free trip into space, it is Dr. Stephen Hawking.
The post Stephen Hawking Is Going To The Edge Of Space appeared first on Universe Today.
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/134567/stephen-hawking-going-edge-space/
The circus of lies just gets more ridiculous every day.
LOL! Put a straight edge on the horizon behind the Virgin space plane. That horizon covers hundreds of miles without even a bit of a curve.
Because the earth has no curvature, quite obvious when you can see a city 50 miles away. Also the earth does not spin at 1000 miles per hour or at all or it would have to be taken in account of a moving runway when flying…or would have to fly a thousand miles an hour to stay in place. I’ve been told by ex military that developed missle tracking systems that there is no curvature or spin and the surface of earth (land and sea is flat). Not that the earth doesn’t have a base or dome above.
NASA and Space X are CGI movie productions and poor at that for the budget.
geodesics…check it out to the comment above…
I mean come on, since 3000BC, we knew earth was sphere…
Hawking.. is an idiot.. doesn’t know about Flat Earth.. no space no gravity.. with all that information out there.. he is a gatekeeper.. or an idiot.. either way this little bitch is going no where!
only to the edge………… keep going, send him to the farthest reaches of the fake galaxy. Put Neil deGrass Tyson in the capsule with him for company.
Just sharing a new site i found. Loving it so far. Refreshing actually.
https://www.conspiracyoutpost.com/