“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.

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.

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.”

Looking to lose a few pounds? How about all of them for 90 minutes, at least.
Zero Gravity Corporation, the only commercial company federally approved to offer weightless flights, arrived on the Peninsula this weekend after receiving permission from NASA last month to fly from its Mountain View facility, Moffett Federal Airfield.

On board for the company’s first flight from Moffett Field on Saturday was San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his fiancee Jennifer Siebel, who were guests of a client chartering a private flight, Zero Gravity spokesman Noah McMahon said.

Newsom attended “because he wanted to experience weightlessness,” McMahon said. “It’s the only way to do it without going to space.” The mayor was not available for comment Monday.

The Las Vegas-based company’s expansion into the Bay Area was prompted by both customer demands and a new agreement with NASA, McMahon said.

Under the contract, signed last month, Zero Gravity will be performing flights for NASA astronaut training at its centers in Houston, Texas and Cleveland, Ohio, according to a company statement. The agreement also paved the way for the company to use NASA runways and facilities for flights elsewhere, including Moffett Field, McMahon said.

“The same aircraft that guests use is that which NASA will be using to train astronauts and do experiments,” McMahon said.

Before this weekend, the company had occasionally chartered flights from San Jose International

Airport for local companies including Hewlett-Packard, Google and Intel, McMahon said. But flying from the San Jose airport lacked the authenticity of using the NASA facility, he said.
So to capitalize on local interest, the company plans to hold regular public flights from Moffett Field roughly once every other month.

“We have quite a few customers that came in from the Bay Area to fly on other flights, so it makes sense to take the airplane to them,” McMahon said.

Zero Gravity has been offering commercial weightless flights since October 2004 and has hosted such amateur astronauts as Martha Stewart, Stephen Hawking and cast members of “The Apprentice” and “The Biggest Loser,” as well as actual astronauts including Buzz Aldrin, according to its Web site.

The sensation of weightlessness is created through “parabolic flight maneuvers,” a controlled ascent and descent that reduces gravity on “G-Force One,” a specially modified Boeing 727-200 airplane, complete with padded walls and floors, according to the company.

The company’s prices may lop a little weight off fliers’ pocketbooks as well. A seat on a chartered 90-minute flight rings up at $3,500, including training with a professional astronaut, a flight suit, photos and a DVD of the experience, and an after-party, according to a company e-mail sent on Monday.

Still, Santa Clara County Airport Commission Chair Bob Lenox predicted the company would find local enthusiasts.

“There’s a lot of would-be astronauts out there,” Lenox said. “I think it will appeal to a lot of geeks like me.”

The company’s next public flight from Moffett Field will be on July 12.

As she floated three feet above the floor Sunday, Rita Kaplan couldn’t believe it: She actually felt like an astronaut in space.

”This is total euphoria,” said Kaplan, a veteran science teacher at Southwest Miami Senior High School. “I’ve never felt anything like this in my life.”

A few feet away, Emery Atkinson, an earth science teacher at North Miami Senior High, did back flips and barrel rolls without touching the floor.

”I’m speechless,” said Atkinson. “My students are going to love this.”

Despite their gravity-defying antics, the two never left the Earth’s atmosphere. Instead, they were on a Boeing 727 that made a series of steep dives, rendering everything inside weightless for about 30 seconds per dip.

Kaplan and Atkinson were among nearly two dozen Florida teachers selected to participate in the zero-gravity flight out of Cape Canaveral. The trip was sponsored by Space Florida, an office of the state created to promote and develop Florida’s aerospace industry.

During the short periods of zero gravity, the teachers soared like Superman, conducted experiments and chased M&Ms down with their mouths — all in the name of promoting the sciences and engineering in Florida. They will share photographs with their students and describe their experience Tuesday.

”It’s going to be such a hoot for them to see me flying around the plane,” Kaplan said. “I hope they’ll get excited and start thinking about the possibilities for their own lives.”

In parabolic flight, a method used to train astronauts for more than four decades, the plane flies a path that resembles rolling hills. As the aircraft climbs, passengers are pressed against the floor for a half-minute of hypergravity. As it goes over the hump and then dives, they rise off the floor and begin to float. The experience is akin to the free fall of a sky dive, only without the wind resistance.

Parabolic flight was recently made available to the public: A company called the Zero Gravity Corporation runs a limited number of commercial flights, charging about $4,000 per person. Space Florida hosts about four parabolic flights for teachers each year, spokeswoman Deb Spicer said.

Kaplan, a 31-year educator, won her seat in a raffle at the Florida Association of Science Teachers. Atkinson was selected because of his involvement in the NASA’s Science, Engineering, Mathematics and Aerospace Academy program.

Before the flight, Atkinson let his students vote on what experiments he would conduct in zero gravity. Overwhelmingly, they voted to have their teacher tossed like a ball between two of his colleagues.

Early Sunday morning, Atkinson, Kaplan and the other teachers met at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville.

Each was given a navy blue flight suit, a light breakfast and a small pill to help control motion sickness.

They sat for a 30-minute pre-flight briefing and then boarded a bus to a small airport nearby.

The energy was palpable.

”I’m out of my skin with excitement,” Kaplan said. “It doesn’t feel real.”

At the airport, the jet, called ”G-Force One,” was waiting for the teachers. From the outside, it looks like a typical commercial airliner. But inside, most of the seats have been removed and replaced by white padding.

During the next hour, the plane did a series of 15 dives, giving the teachers about eight minutes of weightlessness. They experimented with yo-yos, springs and Koosh balls. They watched golf-ball-sized globs of water float across the plane.

All the while, they laughed, screamed and cheered like schoolchildren.

”This just proves that teachers are like big kids,” said Robert Dull, a Pinellas County teacher. “This is like being on a playground.”

Goofing around aside, the teachers had a serious mission: to promote science education.

As part of the program, they will bring pictures and a DVD of their experience back to their classrooms.

They’ll talk to their students about about gravity and Newton’s Laws of Motion, and stress careers in the sciences and engineering.

To drive the point home, Atkinson and Kaplan will wear their flight suits to school. ”When they see stuff like this, they start asking questions,” Atkinson said of his students. “And when you get this group to start asking questions, that’s an amazing thing.”

NASA will host commercial weightless flights this weekend.
The space agency announced that the flights, at Moffett Field, Calif., are sold out, but more flights will be scheduled for later this year. The flights are a result of an agreement between NASA and Zero Gravity, of Las Vegas.

A Reimbursable Space Act Agreement between NASA’s Ames and Zero-G allows the company to use the airfield while conducting its flights. At also forms the basis for research cooperation between NASA and Zero-G, scheduled to begin this fall.

The company will use a modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft, called G-Force One, with passengers aboard on Saturday. The passengers will feel the same weightlessness that astronauts experience while orbiting the Earth and the same gravity conditions they would encounter on the moon and Mars. The weightlessness will last for brief periods during the flight.

Peter H. Diamandis, chairman of Zero-G, which recently received a NASA contract to research astronaut training, said passengers will be able to “fly like Superman and float in midair just like NASA astronauts from an actual NASA center.”

The Boeing 727-200 is one of the quietest aircrafts in service, NASA said. Zero-G said the flights will occur during daylight hours and not interfere with its operations. The company will reimburse NASA for runway and support costs.

Zero-G began offering weightless flights to the public in June 2006, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The company operated up to seven flights per week, up to a maximum of 280 flights a year in Florida.

Ames director S. Pete Worden said the cooperative agreement between NASA and Zero-G will enhance the space agency’s partnerships with the growing commercial space industry.

In the world of gamers, Richard Garriott answers to the name “Lord British.” But what about in space?

Call him a “space tourist,” and Garriott will grimace. Instead the lanky, 46-year-old computer gaming tycoon thinks of himself as a “private astronaut”–and he’s hoping that hundreds of other people will want to earn the same title, too.

On Oct. 12, Garriott plans to be the sixth private citizen to head into space. He will be joining an elite group of astronauts, including several billionaires and fellow millionaires such as telecom entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari and former Microsoft executive Charles Simonyi.

Space travel is getting trendier at the speed of light.Virgin Galactic, a company started by Richard Branson, plans to jet tourists into suborbital space as early as 2009. Tickets will cost $200,000 apiece. So far, 200 people have signed up for flights, including physicist Stephen Hawking and actress Sigourney Weaver. Then there’s Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), which recently announced the first 10 teams of competitors in its $30-million Lunar X Prize contest to send a spacecraft back to the moon. (See “Google Shoots For The Moon.”)

But Garriott’s ambitions stretch beyond merely reaching space. He wants to reinvent the way Americans view and, eventually, experience space travel. “I grew up listening to criticisms of space exploration,” says Garriott. “My mission is to show that this is a useful, profitable activity.”

Garriott isn’t exaggerating when he says he grew up hearing about space: His father, Owen Garriott, is a former NASA astronaut who completed two space missions in 1973 and 1983. Richard opted for more of a virtual profession, however, and started designing videogames including the best selling “Ultima” computer game series in the 1980s. His windfall came in 1992 when gaming giant Electronic Arts (nasdaq: ERTS - news - people ) acquired Origin Systems, a videogame publisher he co-founded in 1983. He still actively designs games for developer Destination Games, which he helped launch in 2000. Last year, he released Tabula Rasa, a “near future” sci-fi game that takes players on a romp through the cosmos.

So why not go for real?

Garriott says he began funding space tourism research in the 1990s, hoping to be the first private citizen in orbit. In 2000, he teamed up with Virginia-based Space Adventures after meeting Chief Executive Eric Anderson at an Explorers Club gala. Currently a Space Adventures board member, he’s also a trustee of the X Prize, a nonprofit organization that awards big prizes to inventors in hopes of spurring innovation. Other X Prize trustees include Google co-founder, Larry Page. “There’s an astonishing overlap between high-tech entrepreneurs and people interested in privatization of space,” Garriott says. “Branson, Bezos, Elon Musk, the Google guys–we all know each other.”

The collapse of the dot-com bubble drained Garriott’s fortune–enough, he says, that he didn’t feel comfortable paying out $20 million, the going price in 2000 for a spaceflight. Space Adventures sold Garriott’s spot on its waiting list to multimillionaire Dennis Tito, who became the first space tourist in April 2001.

After rebuilding his wealth with his gaming business and clearing his schedule, Garriott last year signed on again for another flight. Assuming all goes according to plan, he is slated to lift off from Kazakhstan aboard the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TMA-13 on Oct. 12. Garriott is scheduled to spend 10 to 14 days on the International Space Station with four other people, including second-generation Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov and NASA astronaut, Michael Fincke.

Tickets aren’t cheap, now at $30 million apiece. Garriott says that he will pay some portion out of his own pocket and is seeking corporate sponsorship to cover the rest of the bill. One company that will help him out: Huntsville, Ala.-based ExtremoZyme, which develops enzymes for research and industrial application. Owen Garriott was one of ExtremoZyme’s founders; Richard is an investor.

To prepare for the flight, Garriott is logging time in Russia’s Star City cosmonaut training center and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which houses a mockup of the space station. There will also be a stint in the Black Sea for survival training. He’s already completed “centrifuge runs” at Brooks Air Force in San Antonio, Texas, to simulate the body’s reaction to re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

Once in space, Garriott’s itinerary will be busy. To show that space travel isn’t just a lark, he’s promoting in-flight commercial activities. For sponsor ExtremoZyme, he will take protein molecules into space and document their crystallization in zero gravity. The data, he says, could be used to develop drugs and therapies for various ailments.

Garriott also plans to devote time to photographing the earth, in a nod to the 60 days his father spent in 1973 making observations from space station Skylab 3. Snapping pictures of urban areas, glaciers, deserts, forests and volcanoes will show how earth has changed “within a lifetime,” he says. He also wants to communicate with schools–possibly by streaming video–to promote awareness of space travel.

Despite a lifetime of preparation, discussing the prospect of space travel still makes him giddy. “The total time from the beginning of re-entry to being on the ground is six minutes,” he marvels. “It’s phenomenal.”

He’s equally excited about an increasingly accessible future for space travel. Space Adventures is currently negotiating with cosmonauts to take guests to the moon and back. Garriott likens it to chartering a pilot: “You’d get two seats at a time, with input into how long you stay, where you fly and where to dock.” He is also keen on the plans under way at Las Vegas-based start-up, Bigelow Aerospace, to develop a commercial space operation for low-earth orbit by 2012.

“If you look at my creations, homes, collections and vacations, it’s one big continuum,” he notes. Case in point: His Austin, Texas, estate–named Britannia Manor in a nod to his English roots–boasts an observatory, secret passageways and dungeons. An avid amateur magician, Garriott also collects oddities including scientific instruments and favors extreme adventures such as safaris, exploring hydrothermal vents in Antarctica and salvaging deep ocean wrecks.

It all feeds his overarching goal of making space travel commercially viable. “The fundamental reason for going is just that I want to go. Participating as a follower or viewer would be enough,” says Garriott. “But the great joy of going is to be productive. There’s so much value all around you up there.”

The sight of Stephen Hawking, scientist and best-selling author, bouncing about weightless in space is about to become a reality later today.

Renowned theoretical physicist and author of A Brief History of Time, the 65-year-old physicist will be the first person with a disability to fly on one of the flights offered by Zero Gravity a space tourism company, based in Florida.

The firm offers stomach-churning, sometimes vomit-inducing, flights for £1,875, although Professor Hawking has been offered the flight for free.

A similar plane, nicknamed the “vomit comet”, is used by the American space agency Nasa to train astronauts.

After the modified Boeing 727, which will take off and land from the space shuttle runway at Cape Canaveral, has reached its proper altitude, Prof Hawking’s assistants will lay him on his back in the front of the cabin for the first plunge.

Each “parabolic” manoeuvre will begin with a sharp climb to around 32,000 feet, followed by a rapid 8,000-foot descent. Other plunges will be made only after the two doctors and three nurses who are accompanying him have made sure he is enjoying it.

“I have wanted to fly in space all of my life,” Professor Hawking told the Associated Press.

“For someone like me whose muscles don’t work very well, it will be bliss to be weightless.”

Prof Hawking is almost totally paralysed by motor neuron disease. Unable to talk or move his hands and legs, he can only make tiny facial expressions using the muscles around his eyes, eyebrows, cheek and mouth to communicate. Otherwise, he relies on a computer, attached to his wheelchair, to talk for him in a synthesised voice.

He will not have his wheelchair and talking computer on the jet with him, although his assistant will bring a laptop and a card with the letters of the alphabet in case he wants to communicate beyond facial expressions.

“We consider … having him weightless for 25 seconds is a successful mission,” said Peter Diamandis, chairman and chief executive of Zero Gravity. “If we do more than one, fantastic.”

Today’s flight is more than a thrill ride for Prof Hawking. He believes in the importance of private space ventures and the need to reduce the cost of space tourism so that it is within reach of more people.

“I am hopeful that if we can engage this mass market, the cost of space flight will drop and we will be able to gain access to the resources of space and also spread humanity beyond just Earth,” he said.

“Sooner or later, some disaster may wipe out life on Earth. The long-term survival of the human race requires that we spread into space.”

Last year Prof Hawking publicly spoke of his desire to go into space and appealed to Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, who plans to provide sub-orbital rides to paying passengers as early as 2009.

Sir Richard has agreed to “fix it” for the professor and arrange a Virgin Galactic flight for him. The spacecraft, to be launched from a mother ship at 50,000 feet, is supposed to soar to a height of 360,000 feet and reach a speed of 2,500 mph.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his fiancé took a ride into outer space this weekend.

The city’s first couple were guests on a zero gravity flight stationed at NASA’s Moffet Federal Airfield over the weekend.

During the weightless trip Newsom and his fiancé, Jennifer Siebel danced in the air, flew like Superman and did flips in the air.

The weightless experience is being offered by ZERO-G, the only commercial opportunity on Earth for individuals to enjoy true “weightlessness” without going into space.

The flight is the identical weightless flight experience used by NASA to train its astronauts.

It was also used by actors Ron Howard and Tom Hanks to film the movie “Apollo-13.”

ZERO-G offers regular flights for the general public from Las Vegas, Florida and now Moffett Field at a cost of $3,500.

The next public flight from Moffett Field will take place July 12, 2008.

Professor Stephen Hawking, Martha Stewart, Joey Fatone, Billy Bush, Burt Rutan, Miles O’Brien are just a few notable passengers who’ve flown with ZERO-G.

The cost of the ticket includes training led by a professional astronaut, a flight of 15 parabolas, flight suit, complimentary merchandise, awards, a post-event party, photos and a DVD of the flight.

Numerous astronauts including Buzz Aldrin and Anousheh Ansari also have enjoyed ZERO-G voyages.