Flying in zero gravity becoming more commonplace

WEIGHTLESS ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN -- Science teacher Mike Hickey has long understood the difference between mass and weight. Now, floating in zero gravity, he doesn't just understand it; he feels it. The 54-year-old Cleveland high school teacher is giggling like a middle-schooler with a crush: "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I still have mass. No weight."\nHickey, all 197 pounds of him, is drifting along with 38 other teachers inside a specially modified jet diving over the Atlantic Ocean.\nAfter this, Hickey figures it will be simple to get his students to understand mass versus weight. The kids will see on video "this fat old man floating around like there was no weight there at all ... I definitely lost weight. I lost all my weight."\nZero gravity, once an exclusive playground for astronauts and select scientists, is no longer out of reach to others. Millionaires, doctors and teachers are feeling the fleeting freedom of weightlessness. The price is less than $4,000 for nearly five minutes in zero-G.\n"It's the wave of the future," said Syracuse University public administration and space policy professor W. Henry Lambright. "It's part of the maturity of the space program."\nIn the more than 40 years of zero-gravity flights, beginning with astronauts, the world's two largest space agencies have flown thousands of scientists, engineers, astronauts and even the cast and crew of the movie Apollo 13, said Alan Ladwig, a former NASA associate administrator. Ladwig, now Washington space operations chief for Northrop Grumman Corp., estimates that 50,000 people have flown in zero gravity.\nFive planes create zero-G conditions. NASA has one. The European Space Agency has one. The Russians have one. Two are commercially operated in the United States by Zero Gravity Corp. of Dania Beach, Fla.\nBesides Zero Gravity Corp., there are at least three other companies that sell zero-G flights to tourists, including Novespace of France, Space Adventures Ltd. of Virginia and Incredible Adventures Inc. of Florida. Those companies must arrange for a jet either from Zero Gravity Corp. or the European or Russian space agencies.\nIn late September, French doctors took a patient in a European plane, operated by Novespace, for the world's first human operation in zero gravity - removal of a cyst from a man's arm.\nThis month NASA asked college students to apply for the chance to fly in zero and lunar gravity on NASA's specially equipped jet.