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.”