Private Vomit Comet

Over the past week, Xeni Jardin (co-editor of BoingBoing and Wired contributor) has posted a series of articles (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) on her experience flying with Zero Gravity Corporation (Zero-G), a company founded by X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis, to offer its customers commercial weightless flights in a specially modified 727-200 aircraft.

Today, Rand Simberg discusses Alan Boyle's report on Zero-G's inaugural flights, mentioning that Diamandis faced a 10-year process of jumping over regulatory hurdles erected by the FAA. This is shocking. The technique used to create weightlessness using a parabolic arc flight-path is not really novel; it's been around for decades. I would think that informed consent is all that's really required. Geez.

At about $3000 for the flight, I don't think I'll be trying this soon, but it certainly brings an astronaut experience closer and closer to normal, paying customers.