3 Photos
Riders outside a Zero-G plane.
Riders experience weightlessness on a Zero-G flight. Zero-G Photos
The inside of the Zero-G Boeing 727. Zero-G Photos
As Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson spend billions of dollars traveling to the edge of space with their own rockets, in an effort to make space publicly accessible, adrenaline junkies can now “go” to space, too, without actually traveling farther than the Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach.
Those willing to spend the whopping $7,500 per person, per flight, can experience true “weightlessness” aboard Zero-Gravity’s G-Force One, a modified Boeing 727, when it comes to Westhampton Beach this month.
Zero-G will be in Westhampton Beach from August 20 to 24 operating a few different flights during those days, with a hope to fly just under 100 passengers in total.
Here’s how it works: The Boeing 727-200 flies at a typical commercial altitude of about 24,000 feet above ground. Once the aircraft reaches the designated airspace, the pilots bring the aircraft to a 45 degree “nose high” until it reaches about 32,000 feet. The plane then “pushes over the top of the parabolic arc,” and for the next 20 to 30 seconds, everything inside the plane is weightless.
The parabola is flown 15 times, for 15 “weightless” periods; the first is a Mars weight parabola, where a passenger’s weight is one-third of that on earth, followed by two lunar parabolas where the passenger’s weight is about one-sixth of that on Earth, and the remainder are zero-gravity parabolas.
“The same exact weightlessness that you would experience in a suborbital flight or orbital flight, like the one that Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson did a few weeks ago, is the same as what you would feel on our 727,” Zero-G Director of Sales Noelle Pearson said.
Zero-G was first founded in 2004 by Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation, veteran astronaut Dr. Byron Lichtenberg, and NASA engineer Ray Cronise. The trio worked for over a decade to craft meticulous procedures and safety regulations to acquire FAA approval, and Zero-G is currently the only operating commercial zero gravity flight open to the general public.
“They finally took their first flight in 2004, and have now flown over 15,000 people, in just under 600 flights, in the 15 years that we’ve been flying,” Ms. Pearson said.
The flight itself lasts about an hour and a half to two hours. Passengers show up at around 8:30 a.m. to take a rapid COVID test, meet their coach for the day, receive their flight suit and Zero-G merchandise, and learn what to do, and what not to do on the flight.
“There’s really not an over-rigorous training, because just about anybody can do this,” Ms. Pearson said. “We've had passengers who have flown with us who are in their 90s, and we’ve had 8-year-olds fly with us.”
The company certainly has an impressive record of celebrities who have taken the ride, including Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber and Martha Stewart, and has appeared on a number of TV shows like NBC’s “The Today Show,” “The Biggest Loser,” “The Apprentice” and “The Bachelor.”
The experience is truly once in a lifetime, Ms. Pearson explained, adding that when people come down they immediately ask when they can ride again.
“I think the most amazing thing is telling the difference, and you can feel it in your body, when you’re going from the Mars weight to the Lunar weight, to the actual zero-gravity environment,” she said. “It’s beyond just a fun experience, but maybe it’s even your first step to becoming an astronaut.”
But Zero-G flights are not only for entertainment; half the year the company is engaged in research, working with NASA, and universities like MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Yale, University of Iowa and their physics and arts departments.
A recent flight had on board researchers who were studying how brain liquid moved within the brain to try and find a cure for Parkinson’s disease and Alzehimers disease, Ms. Pearson said. Just a week later, aboard a Zero-G flight, were Purdue University researchers testing the first refrigerator that will go to the international space station.
“Things that are happening aboard Zero-G are not just for fun, it is a fun experience, but there are also really amazing research projects happening as well,” she said.
To book a seat aboard the weightless flight, visit gozerog.com/reservations/west-hampton-ny-fok.
