If you've ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut (and who hasn't?), you're closer than you think. True, space tourism remains an elusive and expensive promise. But one company is working to bring you the next best thing: zero-gravity flights.
Pretty soon, daredevils all across America will have the chance to experience weightlessness without leaving the atmosphere. Here's how.
Photo by G-R Mottez on Unsplash The company planning to make gravity-free flying more accessible
Zero-G goes cross-country
Zero-G is a Las Vegas company that specializes in organizing gravity-free flights. If you're in Nevada, you've always had the option to hop aboard one of their Boeings and defy gravity.
But in 2020, Zero-G is taking their show on the road, offering Americans from coast to coast the chance to float in midair without having to visit the Nevada desert.
Their tour stops are listed on the company's website. They include Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Orlando, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, Austin, Atlanta, and New England.
You may be wondering how all this works. How do you achieve weightlessness on a Boeing 727? And how long does it last?
Image by Zero-G uses a modified Boeing 727 to give its customers the experience of weightlessness
How to lose weight fast
Weightlessness has long been a staple of NASA's astronaut training. The trick is to pilot the plane in co-ordinated parabolic arcs. For a percentage of the flight path, the plane is actually in free-fall, creating the illusion of a zero-gravity environment. Passengers can float and zip around the fuselage -- exactly as they would in space.
Each Zero-G flight repeats this process 15 times; each time, passengers will remain weightless for 20-30 seconds. Seven minutes (give or take) may not sound like much, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime sensation.
Individual seats cost $5,400 plus tax. But if you're willing to shell out $165,000, you could rent a whole plane for you and your friends.
Not the most cost-effective team-building exercise, but definitely cheaper than paying Elon Musk to send you to space.
