Space Adventures Announces the Acquisition of Zero Gravity Corporation

Space Adventures, Ltd., the world’s leading space experiences company, announced that as of January 1, 2008, the company completed an acquisition of the Florida and Las Vegas based Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G) by increasing its equity stake to 100% ownership. “Space Adventures has been one of the largest investors in ZERO-G for years. Our decision to acquire the remaining equity in ZERO-G is a strategic fit within Space Adventures’ overall business plan, strengthening our position as the only operational commercial spaceflight services company,” said Eric Anderson, President and CEO of Space Adventures. “Because the ZERO-G experience is available to the public at such a reasonable price point, we’ll enable tens of thousands of people to take part in one the most exhilarating aspects of spaceflight, weightlessness.” “Bringing the companies together allows us to provide a range of exclusive commercial spaceflight services from parabolic flights to orbital missions,” said Peter H. Diamandis, CEO of ZERO-G. “ZERO-G will continue as its own brand, but now has the opportunity to be the entry point for a series of vertically integrated space experiences worldwide.” Diamandis, also a co-Founder of Space Adventures, will continue as the CEO of the ZERO-G operating unit, but also joins as Managing Director of the parent company Space Adventures, Ltd. Byron Lichtenberg, co-Founder of ZERO-G and former NASA astronaut, will continue as CTO of ZERO-G. “I’m very excited that Peter Diamandis, who has been a leading visionary in the space industry since co-founding Space Adventures with me in 1998, and Byron Lichtenberg, an astronaut and true American hero, will be working with us to continue growing the company and building this new industry,” said Anderson. Since 2004, ZERO-G has flown over 175 missions, providing the weightless experience to more than 5,000 customers, including Stephen Hawking. In January 2008, the company won a research and training contract from NASA worth up to $25 million (USD). About ZERO-G: Zero Gravity Corporation (ZERO-G) has operations in Florida and Las Vegas and is the first and only Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved provider of weightless flight to the general public. The company provides flights to the film industries; corporate and incentive market; non-profit research and education sectors; and government. The company was co-founded, in 1993, by X PRIZE Chairman and space visionary, Peter H. Diamandis, M.D.; veteran astronaut, Byron K. Lichtenberg, Ph.D., and NASA Engineer Ray Cronise. ZERO-G operates under the highest safety standards as set by the FAA (Part-121) with its partner Amerijet International of Ft. Lauderdale Florida. Aircraft operations take place under the same regulations set for large commercial passenger airliners. The ZERO-G Experience consists of a brief training session for passengers followed by a 90-minute flight aboard G-Force One, during which parabolic maneuvers are performed; Flyers experience Martian gravity (1/3-gravity), Lunar gravity (1/6-gravity), and zero gravity. About Space Adventures: Space Adventures, the company that organized the flights for the world’s first private space explorers: Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, Anousheh Ansari and Charles Simonyi, is headquartered in Vienna, Va. with an office in Moscow. It offers a variety of programs such as the availability today for spaceflight missions to the International Space Station and around the moon, Zero-Gravity flights, cosmonaut training, spaceflight qualification programs and reservations on future suborbital spacecrafts. The company’s advisory board includes Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, Shuttle astronauts Sam Durrance, Tom Jones, Byron Lichtenberg, Norm Thagard, Kathy Thornton, Pierre Thuot, Charles Walker, Skylab/Shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev.

Fighting gravity: Central Florida students enjoy Zero G flight

Many people have wondered what it would be like to be completely weightless, but few people ever experience it. A group in the University of Central Florida’s Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) took it a step further than wondering and experienced zero gravity through a program sponsored by Space Florida. Space Florida is a state agency that is trying to enhance the space industry in Florida. Their goal is to try to get companies to have headquarters in Florida as opposed to more popular places, such as California. “There are three foundations, and they are business development, improvements in work-force development and having a good education base, which is where my involvement is,” said Larry Chew, an associate engineering professor at UCF who oversees the program. Chew provided an experiment for the students to build. There were six groups that worked to create and design their own experiments. Three were from UCF, two were middle school groups, and one was a high school group. “I gave them the dimensions for a box, which were 9-by-12-by-16, and the only restriction was that no flammable material could be used,” Chew said. From the six groups, one person from each was given the chance to go on a Zero G flight completely free of charge. This also gave them the opportunity to try out their experiments in a setting with zero gravity. This is the first year Space Florida has sponsored a program like this, because teachers who want to promote space education in the classroom are usually the passengers on Zero G flights. One of the people selected to go on the flight was unable to attend at the last minute, so one of the UCF groups was able to fly two members. That group was SEDS at UCF. Stephen Hirst, the group leader and a freshman aerospace engineering major, and Ben Corbin, a senior engineering major, had the luck of the draw - literally. “We did a drawing to make it fair,” Hirst said. Hirst said he hopes to work for NASA in the future, but this was his first time working on a project like this. “I was selected to be group leader because everyone wanted me to get the learning experience,” Hirst said. “I will definitely need the leadership skills.” Hirst said the most difficult obstacle to overcome as the group leader was the large amount of paperwork. It took them about two months to complete their creation. There were six students working on the project, called “14 Minutes to Midnight,” which happened to be the time it was finally finished.

NASA and Zero Gravity to Offer More Commercial Weightless Flights!

During this weekend NASA has hosted commercial weightless flights, which gave people the opportunity to experience the same feeling of weightlessness that the space agency’s astronauts experience while in space. On Thursday, NASA announced that the flights at Moffett Field, California, had been sold out, but the agency promised to offer more such flights later in 2008. The commercial weightless flights are the result of a previous deal between NASA and Zero Gravity. Called the Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, the deal also formed the basis for research cooperation between the United States’ space agency and Zero Gravity, which is a Nevada-based company that has operated weightless flights for about two years now; collaborative research is scheduled to start in fall. Yesterday, the two organizations used a G-Force One, that is a modified Boeing 727-000 aircraft, to offer passengers the same weightlessness feeling NASA’s astronauts experience while in space. The phenomenon of “losing weight” lasted for brief periods during the flight. Zero Gravity’s chairman, Peter H. Diamandis, said that the lucky people that were aboard the aircraft had the chance to “fly like Superman and float in midair just like NASA astronauts from an actual NASA center.”