From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
The Bearable Lightness of Being
Scientific heavyweight Stephen Hawking experiences weightlessness.
The news that British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking will be experiencing weightlessness today onboard Zero-G Corp.'s modified Florida-based Boeing 727, during a flight that is expected to last about one hour, dramatizes one of the greatest potential virtues of creating a spacefaring civilization--the huge advantage that being in space gives to individuals whose illnesses are made worse by the Earth's gravitational field.
Prof. Hawking is a longtime space advocate, and he seized on this opportunity--paid for by Zero G (flights generally cost $3,500; go to www.gozerog.com for details) and supported by the Space Florida industrial promotion organization--to experience what it is like to be in outer space. Orbital treatment centers for people suffering--like Prof. Hawking--from Lou Gehrig's disease, or from muscular dystrophy, paraplegia or any number of other conditions, will likely be an integral part of future space developments. In an email to me, Prof. Hawking wrote, "I hope many others, both disabled and those inspired by space, will follow after me and experience weightlessness."
On Earth, taking care of someone with Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), requires constantly moving the person into and out of a wheelchair. Simple bathroom functions are a major chore for both the patient and caregiver. Deep-tissue massage is needed every day. All of these functions could be handled more easily and with greater dignity for all involved if gravity were not a factor.
To be allowed to carry Prof. Hawking, Zero-G needed to obtain a unique certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)--no one has ever flown a disabled person in weightlessness before. Prof. Hawking will be accompanied by a team of three doctors and at least two of the Cambridge professor's experienced caregivers.
Taking care of Prof. Hawking during the flight presents an important challenge. For about a minute he will be weightless, in free-fall inside the Boeing 727's padded cabin, but that will not last long. As gravity is re-established, the dead weight of the body over which he has no control will render him even more helpless than he is in his wheelchair. Making things even more difficult is the fact that both before and after weightlessness passengers experience about 1.8 G's--their bodies weigh almost twice what they do in Earth normal gravity (1 G) as the aircraft climbs and then dives.
Even healthy people who take these flights need to be assisted by experienced crew members. Weightless tourist flights with Russian crew members have long been available through Virginia-based Space Adventures, the same company that has organized five private visits to the International Space Station using Soyuz rockets launched from the old Soviet base at Baikonur in Kazakhstan.
Being in microgravity (since there is always some gravitational effect, this is the correct term) for any length of time changes one's metabolism. The human heart, for example, becomes like a ball rather than the "heart"-shaped organ it is on Earth. Blood flows closer to the outer layers of the skin, giving astronauts a characteristic puffy face. It is estimated that a six-month stay on the International Space Station (ISS) causes an average 11% loss of bone density. NASA is working hard to find a way to keep its personnel healthy during long-duration space operations, either on the moon base planned for sometime in the 2020s or on a later trip to Mars.
If Stephen Hawking's pioneering efforts, both on this flight and on the one he plans to take with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic when its rocket is ready, lead to private clinics in orbit, or at least to spaceflight opportunities for people with disabilities, we will have to rethink what it means to be an astronaut. As this aspect of human space travel develops, there will be many more opportunities to study how the human body adapts or fails to adapt to the space environment. John Glenn's 1998 flight on the space shuttle was just the most recent example of a less than perfect human specimen flying into space. There have been a few other amateur astronauts who've needed special treatment, but no one with anything like the needs of a truly disabled person.
At the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs earlier this month, Robert Bigelow of Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace announced plans to launch "habitable modules in Low Earth Orbit." Bigelow wants his facilities to provide a place where governments and organizations that may lack access to the International Space Station or their own human spaceflight programs can send their astronauts to perform research. Mr. Bigelow plans to launch the first operational inflatable module designed for three people in 2010, and larger complexes beginning in 2012.
Mr. Bigelow expects that his company will provide "wholesale" services to governments and major international corporations that want to do research or manufacturing in space. A large hospital could, perhaps, make a deal to outfit one or more of the modules as an orbital medical facility.
Liability and safety questions would need to be resolved, since this would be the first facility of its kind. Mr. Bigelow explained that "the last thing the private spaceflight industry needs is for harm to come to any client." By the end of the next decade, there will be a large number of very rich baby boomers who will have both the money and the need to live out their final days in weightlessness. At some future point, going to space to visit grandma or great-grandma might be a normal part of growing up for thousands of kids world-wide.
Such an orbital home was anticipated in the classic story "Waldo" by the science-fiction grand master Robert A. Heinlein, whose centennial will be celebrated this year. As is so often the case in the space industry, what can be imagined can eventually be done, but it is often more difficult than expected.
In one of the answers to my questions, Prof. Hawking wrote: "I think that getting a portion of the human race off the ground is imperative for our future as a species. It will be difficult to do this with slow, expensive and risk-adverse government space programs. We need to engage the entrepreneurial engine that has reduced the cost of everything from airline tickets to personal computers. Personal spaceflight is the first mass market [outer-space venture] and zero-gravity flights are the first, most affordable step in that direction. I am hopeful that if we can engage this mass market, the cost of spaceflight will drop, and we will be able to gain access to the resources of space and also to spread humanity beyond the Earth."
Mr. Dinerman writes a weekly column for the Space Review, (www.thespacereview.com), and does consulting for the Department of Defense. His views in no way represent those of the department.
