Learning to fly

Yesterday, Stephen Hawking flew in 0-gravity.

This "ordinary" feat for anybody is an even bigger feat for Mr. Hawking who, since the early age of 21 started developing Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (colloquially known as Lou Gehrig's disease), a degenerative disease that would slowly and painfully cripple him. Join the back of your hands (more like the exterior part of your wrists) and keep them joined for 15 minutes and imagine that same pain all over your body all the time.

We have all seen him in his well know wheel-chair (actually, he's had several, designed by himself) and a little apparatus similar to a computer mouse with which he was able to form sentences to talk with the help of his speech. When I saw the news today, that device had dissapeared and he was left with a device attached to his face, to capture facial movements in order to implement all those functions.

But when he was released into 0-gravity his smile covered most of his face. His twisted body floated gracefully in mid-air and you could easily see this moment was going to be one of the high-points of his life.

He is planning a low-orbit space-trip for next year. Keep it up, Steve!