Stephen Hawking Will Travel To Space (skynews.com.au) 77
Professor Stephen Hawking says he is planning to travel into space on Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. From a report: The physicist and cosmologist, 75, said he had not expected to have the opportunity to experience space but that the Virgin boss had offered him a seat. Discussing the meaning of happiness on Good Morning Britain, he said: "My three children have brought me great joy. And I can tell you what will make me happy, to travel in space. I thought no one would take me but Richard Branson has offered me a seat on Virgin Galactic, and I said yes immediately."
Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:5, Insightful)
With his disease, he should have been dead decades ago. Even without it, I wouldn't have expected him to be around too much longer. If he wants to die unaware after blacking out due to high G acceleration on the off chance he'll get to see the Earth from space and has the opportunity to do it... good for him.
I wouldn't insure him on his trip, but I wouldn't stop him, either.
Re:Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think Virgin Galactic's flight plan involves nearly the kind of g forces one experiences on a rocket. It's basically a plane that goes really really high. Take a look at the flight plan for SpaceShipTwo, which was the previous generation. [space.com]. (The image came from here [space.com])
I really don't know what I'm talking about, so this might be TOTALLY wrong, but: It says it accelerates to 2500mph over 70 seconds. 2500mph divided by 70 seconds, in meters per second, is about 1.5Gs.
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Re:Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:4, Informative)
You are acting like you know what the profile is and just aren't telling us. I'm guessing in reality you have no idea.
FWIW, according to this article [space.com] SpaceShipTwo riders will experience 3Gs on takeoff and 6Gs on decent.
As a reference point, SpaceShipOne riders experienced about ~5G of deceleration when it re-entered the atmosphere...
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SpaceShipTwo can accelerate as much as 3.8 g during accent and up to 6 g during reentry. I don't think they will be sending him up if there is even the slightest risk to his health.
Reference: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2009/12/07/spaceshiptwo-whiteknighttwo-specs-flight-profile/
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Maybe they can send Dr. Hawking's old grad student, Nathan Myrvhold in his place.
Re:Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:4, Interesting)
It has been.
Many years ago Peter Dimandis took Hawking on a ride in a private version of the Vomit Comet, where they flew up really high, put the aircraft into freefall so the occupants would also go into freefall, and then leveled off and flew up again, etc. Same training that is provided to astronauts and is used to test machinery and processes in zero-G where they only need a few minutes of effective 0G.
Diamandis was worried about how Hawking's body would handle it, but apparently Hawking had the time of his life and they made so many passes that they had to stop because they were getting low on fuel, not because Hawking couldn't take it.
While there is probably added risk to Hawking compared to the Vomit Comit, as the G-forces imparted are going to be higher at least on the ascent phase, if they're calculable and can be studied then it may be safe enough.
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His situation is tough. He on the other hand is lucky enough to have top-notch round-the-clock medical care and supervision because of his status. I wouldn't begrudge him this because he is one of the important scientific minds of this age, but stop trying to make him out to be some kind of biological superman. He isn't.
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"space" is quite marginal as far as VG is concerned.
Re: Is Hawking up for the rigors of spaceflight? (Score:2)
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it would be a fitting end for such an important person to science.
I don't want to belittle his achievements, but he really isn't that important to science. He is more famous for his disability than his contributions. If you mention his name, plenty of people will say "that's the smart guy in the wheelchair with the funny voice", but very few of them would know about anything that he has done. He theorized that black holes emit radiation, and came up with some hypothesis about quantum gravity ... and that's about it.
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it would be a fitting end for such an important person to science.
If you mention his name, plenty of people will say "that's the smart guy in the wheelchair with the funny voice", but very few of them would know about anything that he has done. He theorized that black holes emit radiation, and came up with some hypothesis about quantum gravity ... and that's about it.
I thought he was the one who in university made the Big Bang hypothesis work out in mathematics for the first time (maybe along with Roger Penrose). This is kind of an important thing in cosmology and in my books puts him amongst the greats like Feynman, Bohr, et al before him. Of course we also have Hawking radiation named after him and all the other stuff that you mention.
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Good on Mr. Branson (Score:3)
I guess you could call this a stunt as Dr. Hawking, at 75 and with his health issues would not be considered a likely astronaut but I think it's great that he is given this opportunity.
Too many people have gone (Arthur C. Clarke as one) that fully expected to experience spaceflight during their lives and it's nice to see Dr. Hawking will get that opportunity.
From somebody hoping that one day their ship will come in and get the same experience.
Re:Good on Mr. Branson (Score:5, Interesting)
Since his days are numbered, maybe he figures it's worth the risk, and being the first civilian to die in space maybe has a record-book appeal to it. Go in style. Beats the nursing home.
Re: Good on Mr. Branson (Score:1)
The Challenger's crew died in the explosion while in the earth's atmosphere.
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Almost certainly not. The crew cabin remained in one piece, essentially structurally intact and quite possibly pressure-intact, until it struck the water with a 200 g impact. The crew were killed either by depressurization (perhaps) or by the impact with the water (at the latest). During disintegration of the flimsy main vehicle in the air, the crew were subjected to no more than 20 g, unlikely to have mechanically killed, or even s
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Perhaps I should have said "first tourist" instead of "first civilian".
Definetly a stunt (Score:2)
Oh, it's definitely a stunt - Branson needs publicity to divert attention away from the fact that SpaceShip Two is well over a decade late and still at least a year (and very likely more) from operations.
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Too many people have gone (Arthur C. Clarke as one) that fully expected to experience spaceflight during their lives and it's nice to see Dr. Hawking will get that opportunity
You touched a nerve there. Of all people I would of been very happy to see him experience space for himself. Rest in peace Mr Clarke
Re:What exactly has he accomplished? (Score:5, Informative)
He applied QM to black holes to determine that they inevitably must radiate energy, and thus are finite and will eventually evaporate. Why Hawking Radiation has yet to be observed (darned hard), it's one of the first critical examples of how Quantum Mechanics would effect a Classical system (in this case, a black hole, a singularity born out of General Relativity). So yes, it's pretty darned important.
Re:What exactly has he accomplished? (Score:4, Informative)
So there was vigorous debate and Hawking was wrong! Wow, that must mean Hawking is totally useless.
As to Hawking radiation, the point wasn't that he was right (he's not actually wholly wrong either), but rather that it was one of the first major attempts to unify QM and GR, to look for a way in which classic and quantum mechanics both can product phenomena. But some other areas in which he has worked are:
From http://www.physicsoftheunivers... [physicsoftheuniverse.com]
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He applied QM to black holes to determine that they inevitably must radiate energy, and thus are finite and will eventually evaporate.
Only for very large values of "eventually". A black hole the size of the sun would take 10e67 years to evaporate. The sun contains about 10e57 hydrogen atoms. So that means it would lose the mass of one hydrogen atom every 10 billion years, which is roughly the current lifetime of the universe. To lose an entire gram would take a hundred trillion trillion times as long as that.
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Hawking radiation for one and he did the mathematical proofs for others that's about as close as you get in astrophysics.
Re:What exactly has he accomplished? (Score:5, Interesting)
Saying he has "a disability" is a massive understatement. The man's body has been effectively useless for decades now, serving only to keep his brain ticking and providing a cumbersome and exhausting means to slowly communicate. But he continues to engage the public and maintain a sense of humor. So that's something.
Sure, he's a celebrity. But he's also done some great things even if you discount all of his scientific accomplishments. He's served well as the face and (robo-)voice of science for a while. I think he's worthy of a short jaunt up to space.
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Outside of his many academic accomplishments, him simply being alive gives a lot of people hope probably.
Most people that get diagnosed with ALS are dead within 2-4 years, many times because it is hard to diagnose or is miss-diagnosed. Also it is incurable, and impacts different people differently. Hawking was diagnosed as a relatively young man, and is still around 40+ years later, now talking about going to space.
Such Charity (Score:5, Funny)
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What better way to prove ADA compliance than this?
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Yes, you will be happy to know that bathrooms in space are 100% unisex. However you might need to bring along an adapter to achieve hermetic seal with any non-standard equipment that you might have. Remember that a space bathroom needs to suck your stuff off or it will float around the cabin in tiny droplets.
On that subject, please don't try the pull out method if you get busy with a crewmate.
If there was a GoFundMe page... (Score:3)
... I'd so chip in a few $$ for this.
Worst case, Dr. Hawkings dies doing what he loves.
Best case, aliens pick him up, think humans are way smarter than we are, and appoint us leaders of the Galaxy.
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Actually, Hawking is afraid of aliens. That seems a little weird for a guy who has spent his life studying the physics of the heavens, but there ya go.
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aliens pick him up, think humans are way smarter than we are, and appoint us leaders of the Galaxy.
What ?! One Trump isn't enough for ya ?
All about Trump (Score:1)
Stephen Hawking will travel to space (Score:2)
When?
While I hold him in high regard and wish him the very best, I suspect by the time the travel actually happens, he will be travelling there in an urn.
The Hawk-man cometh! (Score:2)
And he's bringin' Doomsday!