Would You Take A Zero-G Holiday?

Once upon a time we’d take fast fairground rides to get a sense of it, nowadays we can actually, you know, just do it: head off into the wide blue yonder of zero gravity sensation.

Sensation seekers these days have this new option on their itinerary, for when those picnics and beach holidays get a little tired, why not get a sense of life on Mars?

Space.com talks up the holidays offered by Zero Gravity Corporation, who are taking people up and out in a G-Force One airplane to experience weightlessness.

These are all part of the many ongoing 21st-Century experiments attempting to assess the scientific and societal advantages of space vehicles and the benefits of pushing forward toward privatized space flight.

Back to vacationing: Zero-G flights are available from: Las Vegas, Nev., Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Titusville, Fla. Seattle, Wash., Los Angeles, Calif., Washington, D.C. and New York also sometimes see scheduled flights.

These zero-G explorers spent 11 years getting the licenses they needed for these flights, since then 6,000 people have taken the rides. And while Zero-G’s flights never leave Earth’s orbit, they will do, one day…

We have ordinary, rich citizens flying in space now, but very few of them because they are very expensive,” Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, told SPACE.com.

“For the ordinary person of more modest means, it might be a couple decades, but it certainly should be in the next 40 years. In my mind, it’s not if it’s going to happen, it’s when.”

They ain’t cheap — a spell in Zero-G costs $4,950 per person. 36 passengers go up for each ride, they get 45 minutes training and then, ‘boom’, up, up and away they go. Kind of like Buzz Lightyear. But only kinda.

Would you do it?

Via: Space.com