Byron and I gently lift Professor Hawking into zero g and then we pulled away and we watching him now Professor Hawking has very few muscles he can he can work none in his arms and legs um tiny few in his mouth and in his eyes and for the first time ever I see him smile and there’s this smile that looks like the smile of a child and a massive transformative purpose is what you’re telling the world it’s like this is who I am this is what I’m going to do this is the dent I’m going to make in the universe hi everybody welcome back to mindsets and moonshots Nick good to see you my friend yeah good to see you man been seeing a lot of you uh yeah which I which I enjoy but hey um we have a good one for you folks today and I’m just going to get right into it I heard in a meeting room recently that you almost killed stepen
[00:01:03] Hawking is this true uh let’s just say I put him in a dangerous situation uh when we flew the world’s expert in gravity into zero gravity um long story uh but I do remember a couple of phone calls when people heard that we were going to do this like Peter you’re insane you’re going to kill the world’s exper you know the top physicist on the planet and uh let’s just say it was a it was a dangerous Gambit it was something he very much wanted to do and something that I thought was the reason that I created zerog in the first place to give people the chance to experience weightlessness who might not otherwise be able to so let’s start from the beginning here why the idea for Zer G in the first place why was that important what kind of problem were you trying to solve or was it just something fun that you were trying to put into the world well
[00:02:00] listen I’ve been a space cadet since I was a kid you know it was Apollo and Star Trek got me started and I wanted to be an astronaut I wanted to experience weightlessness I wanted to open up the space Frontier and the first step for me was could I get on NASA’s zerog G airplane so it turns out since the late 1950s NASA has been using a weightless aircraft it’s a zerog aircraft I you see these photographs of people floating in this room and I used to think when I was a kid is there this zero g room like this room that you go inside you flip a switch and people start floating and the answer is no there’s no such thing there’s no way to cancel gravity but um there was their what’s called parabolic airplane it’s also called I hate to use the name the vomit Comet but that’s a different story and I learned that NASA has this airplane that they were flying these parabolic flights it’s like this giant roller coaster and you go up at at a 45°
[00:03:00] angle and as you go over the top and you come back down you’re weightless for 30 seconds and on a typical NASA flight that they’d use to train the astronauts so they do science missions and so forth you’d be weightless for 30 seconds then you’d waigh twice as much for another 30 seconds and they would do it over and over and over again and they might do 30 40 50 100 parabas during a flight and I was like I want to do this you know there’s the you know the 9-year-old kid in me saying I want to go experien weightlessness so I go to my friends in that case it was two uh incredible individuals Byron lenberg who had flown twice in the space on the space shuttle and then Ray C and then Ray cronise who had been flying a 100 times on NASA’s airplane I said can you get me on there and I said I’ll volunteer I’ll be a guinea pig and the answer after working it through was no we can’t uh and I was like really pissed and you know for me you know no simply means begin one level
[00:04:00] higher and so I ended up saying well if I want to go so much I bet you other people want to go on zerog g too uh and it was back in 1993 remember it was May of 1993 ages ago and I said we’ll start a company that’s my reaction typically as an entrepreneur whenever I see a problem I want to solve or an opportunity you know is the first step towards opening the space Frontier and I figured the more people who got a chance to experience space or weightlessness the more who would like it the more who’d want to get involved long story short um we kick it off and I figure this will be a piece of cake it will be easy to go and do this you know we’ll go by the airplane we’ll go start doing it and start advertising it but that wasn’t the case uh we had to go through the FAA and I remember the first time we went to go and meet with the FAA uh at the end of the day day
[00:05:00] they said you’re insane there is no way we’re going to allow you to put people in the back of an airplane take off their seat belts put them up into this 45 degree climb push it over the top and do this giant aerobatic maneuver with a large airplane it just isn’t allowed so T time out if anybody is listening to this that’s like me how the hell do you get access to the [ __ ] FAA is it somebody that you call and say hey can we bring these folks to this just seems so Out Of Reach this seems um incredibly difficult talk to me about how you even got in front of them how did this idea matur to a point where you were somebody who can actually demand a conversation with them well I mean listen every government agency has inroads right and and there are you can find out who the right person to go and speak to is um one of the things that we did was uh you know and this is as an
[00:06:02] entrepreneur you find uh the right buttons to push you find the right people right it’s like who is the right person to get us in the door uh and we ended up finding a gentleman who had was now a lawyer who had previously been uh part of the FAA he was the General counsil from the fa now he’s in private practice and we hired him um and we said hey we went and presented what we wanted to do to him and he said well this is going to be tough but it should be doable we should allow you know be allowed to do this and we went in uh with him and we ended up pitching our case and i’ never been so frustrated in my life when you run like full steam into bureaucracy and the realization was that that there was no benefit to the fa supporting this it was only downside and
[00:07:01] this is a lot of challenges in in all of the government agencies like if you want to do something that’s outside the normal bounds um you know if you end up uh if they end up approving it and it fails and someone gets injured then it’s all downside for them if they approve it and no one gets hurt well it may be a little bit of upside so we had this battle and when I say a battle it was a battle of wits and this engagement with the FAA Nick lasted the better part of a decade um we started in late 93 and we got approval finally in 2004 this was an overnight success after 11 years of hard work and when I talk about being passion driven I mean you have to understand being told no and no and hell no and then having to pick
[00:08:01] yourself up and say well what about this and what about this you know I remember one time I said well maybe we’re going to make flying in zerog g a religious right and so we’re going to create the religion of zag zg wait is that serious you were actually going to create an actual religion well it was like it’s like the fa can’t tell you no about if you’re going to if you’re I mean listen we were exploring every possible approach we were we were looking at doing it inside of a uh a American Indian um Reserve where you know the laws are slightly different we were looking at you know having actually a religious uh uh practice that would you know have the fa approve this um I remember saying to myself uh listen when I was talking to the uh pretty much the top level the associated administrator ERS uh you guys are either going to
[00:09:01] retire or die before I give up and it was that level of of intensity of passion it was like I refu it was like I was going to make this happen there was no way about it it was like I wanted to fly and I wanted to take everybody who wanted to fly into Zury with me hey thanks for listening to Moon shots and mindsets I want to take a second to tell you about a company that I love it’s called levels and it helps me be responsible for the food that I eat what I bring into my body see we were never designed as humans to eat as much sugar as we do and sugar is not good for your brain or your heart or your body in general levels helps me monitor the impact the foods that I eat by monitoring my blood sugar for example I learned that if I dip my bread in olive oil it blunts my glycemic response which is good for my health if you’re interested learn more by going to levels. Linker levels will give you an extra 2 months of membership it’s something that that is critical for the future of your
[00:10:01] longevity all right let’s get back to the conversation in the episode what were some of the things that the fa was telling you man that you thought was just [ __ ] and it pissed you off what what were some of the things you were hearing I could imagine you were hearing the same things time and again every single time he came to them well well so there’s a part of the Federal Aviation regulations these are the what called the fars it’s they’re they’re it’s said that they’re Written in Blood every time that there’s an accident they go back and they find out what caused the accident and they write a new law to prevent it and one of the Federal Aviation regulations was if the airplane is going above 30° nose up or above 30 degrees nose down it is a uh it’s considered a uh man that anybody listening we got some construction happened in the background I’m a big fan saying that there’s two seasons in the world there’s construction and then other season so I’m to get to the other side of it so uh bear with us folks we
[00:11:01] got somebody living in Reverse uh near Peter at the moment but uh we’re going to make we’re make any time you fly the airplane above or below 30 Dees nose up and as you’re climbing or down it’s it’s called aerobatic flight and if you’re flying someone in aerobatic flight you’re required to wear a parachute so the fa wanted me to have everybody inside the airplane wear parachutes and I’m like that’s insane like okay they can wear parachutes but there’s no way they can get out of the airplane if something goes wrong they’re going to die wearing parachutes and so it was like it was a ridiculous requirement that would have killed the company right then and there and hold on pause hold on I I I’m sorry to cut you but why would that have killed the company I would have just said fine just strap on a parachute backpack and let me go I mean why why why was that a sticking point for you I recognize the idioc in it but yeah so it was my belief that we wanted to create an extraordinary experience for people to enjoy weightlessness it is the most peaceful beautiful like being
[00:12:00] in the middle of a of a magic show and you know in the 9s I actually went to post Soviet Russia and we had started a company called Space Adventures that was were taking people on zerog G flights in Moscow at the zikovsky Air Force Base and we’ get inside of a uh uan 76 one of these giant cargo post Soviet cargo airplanes and you’d put on a parach Sho for takeoff and landing and you would sit on the floor of this cargo airplane they would put you into this parabolic flight and it was it was cool but it was not the kind of experience I expected to be offering in in the US um and and it was just it was not what we desired and plus it’s a parachutes are bulky and flying around you’re already bumping into people if you’re bumping into people who are twice as wide with parachutes on it just wasn’t going to
[00:13:00] work fair enough fair enough and and so we ended up uh proving our case that parachutes added no added value the FAA required us to go through a huge series of flight tests we were flying uh with all kinds of strin gauges on board the airplane and flying it uh to the edges of its air capabilities and and we did and we ended up getting all the data and ultimately uh in our opinion gain the data but there was still nobody at the FAA willing to say yes you know it’s just it was just so outside of the norm you know there’s an old saying that you know the fa is not happy until you’re not happy well I wasn’t happy ultimately there was a meeting I had with the head of the FAA I was able to finally work my way up to the very top to a woman Maran Blakey uh she was she had this beautiful Texas draw and I sat down with her in her office
[00:14:02] and I said you know administrator Blakey here’s the situation I’m taking the top us entrepreneurs and business people to Moscow to go and fly zg because I can’t get approval in the United States and I’ll never forget she said well we’ll just have to change that now won’t we and it was ultimately going to the very top to the person who had the authority to say yes and so for entrepreneurs sometimes the person you’re speaking to just doesn’t have the ability to say yes and you can ask until you’re blew in the face and that was the case here I I really want to pick that apart for a sec that that is [ __ ] genius you know I would argue Peter that there’s more than one force happening there it’s not just the person that you’re speaking with but it’s also the leverage that you found don’t you think because you know from the beginning of time this is not a political podcast nor do I want it to be but you know us and Russia have had a relationship is what we’ll call call and
[00:15:00] so you know the moment that uh the moment that you hear that um oh you’re going to Russia to do it ah let’s bring you back home and get you get get you after absolutely and that was a that was a plan convers was that intentional was that intentional without without question right and and it was also intentional to show how idiotic this was that for the better part of 50 years since the N early 50s through 2000s NASA had been doing this safely in an old military airplane and here we were uh upgrading to a much newer commercial aircraft and having proven all of the safety there was just no one willing to say yes and uh and she got that um and she finally uh approved it and you know zerog G now and you can go to gozerog g.com for to get details it flies throughout the United States uh we have flown thousands and thousands of flight without incident it’s extraordinarily
[00:16:00] safe so I I I want to take this to a broader view for a moment Peter um is you know why why is it even important to open up the space Frontier you know I think that we’re going to talk about this a lot on this show but why does that matter you know does someone like me and I can imagine folks listening who have their own set of challenges that they want to face and and take on in the world why did that matter in a to you and why did that matter in a grand scheme for Humanity and it’s a long conversation and I’ll give you the Cliff Notes right now but um when I flew stepen Hawking into zerog G and we’ll talk about that uh I remember we’re on stage at a pre-press conference just before uh we’re about to take off we have news media from around the world the cameras are rolling uh uh Stephen is there communicating through his computer and the first question asked was why do you want to do this clearly this is dangerous for you you’ve got got osteoporosis you can break all the bones
[00:17:00] in your body you’ve got severe pulmonary and cardiac issues you this can kill you why do you want to do this and his answer is one of the two major reasons that I would put forward he said and this is paraphrasing him I don’t think the human race has a future unless it expands into the space Frontier that there are too many dangers facing us here on Earth that all of our precious eggs are in this one b basket called Earth and with the potential for war for nuclear for virus for asteroid impacts for super volcanoes for all the things that could be existential threats if we care about the long-term survival of the human race we need to become a multiplanetary species right this is very much a uh a through line for me personally for Elon Musk for you know for Jeff Bezos and for Steven Hawking the other side of the equation is it’s about inspiring greatness in
[00:18:02] humanity um it’s about having a a a full and infinite Frontier that we can go to when when the Europeans moved uh to the Americas and and move Society from the old world to the New World um it was to create this opportunity for everybody and it has uh you know there’s incredible uh science and historical research that shows the amount of breakthroughs and progress that’s made uh when you’re not limited by your race Creed or color in a new frontier where it’s a meritocracy right where the best people survive and thrive is so important and you know I think about being an American here uh I’m thankful that 500 years ago people risked their lives to come and open up
[00:19:00] America and the American West and I think hundreds of years or actually not even hundreds you know dozens of years from now people will feel the same way for those who opened up the space Frontier uh this is what we humans do we have a uh an exploration Gene in us we explore we move into New Frontiers in those New Frontiers we find new resources we find new problems to solve and when we’re solving problems we’re making the human race more more uh resilient and and bringing new capabilities to everybody so those are some of the themes we’ll talk about in future shows about why space even matters so let let me pick that apart for a second then I’m going to get back to the story um but this feels like a worthy Rabbit Hole what do you have to say to the folks Peter and I I’ve certainly said this in my life and to some extent I still do is you know well why are all these folks going to space you know don’t they why why not devote their time and energy to solve the problems of our planet um such as
[00:20:00] climate change education food hunger Etc um what’s your take on that and the answer is not one or the other it’s both and we are spending a huge amount of energy going after food energy water healthc care education and I spend you know 98% of my time on that but we have to be spending some portion of our time looking beyond that right um you know I talk about existential threats a lot and I do this with my ex prise hat on uh one of the existential threats we’ve been talking about for for many years before the pandemic was in fact pandemics and you know the the SARS K2 uh virus and covid-19 pandemic is is actually a warm-up act it was a small uh glimpse of what could happen you know if it had a much higher mortality rate you know it would have
[00:21:00] been a hell of a lot worse and so hopefully it’s a wake-up call hopefully you know the the scientists around the world are looking at a multitude of different antiviral and protective mechanisms to prevent something that could have a much worse implication uh you know like the Spanish Flu a 100 years ago did or the black plague or any of those the second existential threat is in fact asteroid impacts uh I keep on screaming this and I hope it doesn’t happen but you know uh today we do not have the capability should we see an asteroid coming barreling towards the Earth to truly deflect it and to find it even we miss most of the neear asteroids and one of those asteroids do have to be a a dinosaur killer like we had uh 66 million years ago it could be a fraction of the size Just landing on top of Manhattan or Moscow or Beijing uh it would shut down economic markets around the world uh it can also have a
[00:22:00] multitude of other you know it just goes on and on so you know I I think about uh asteroid impacts is I love the phrase God asking how’s your space program doing uh we need to be able uh to uh to protect ourselves in that regard and then at the end of the day everything we hold of value on earth metals minerals energy real estate is in infinite quantities space it’s going to be a means by which we can uplift humanity and I’ll add one final thread we can talk about which is it’s going to give us a chance to reinvent Society there’s no place you can go on the planet today and start a new country it used to be you know 100 years ago and hundreds of years ago you can go and Conquer some native peoples and come in with a new government it’s it’s doesn’t happen today peacefully but there will be you know we’ll we’ll start new nation states
[00:23:00] in the virtual worlds uh which I think is very cool um we’ll also start new uh nation states in space whether it’s on Mars which Elon wants or whether it’s going to be in space colonies which which Jeff wants um either one is going to allow us to practice new forms I mean I’m a proud American right I’m a I’m a Libertarian capitalist if I was going ever going to label myself but the idea that we have a representative democracy versus a true democracy because that was the only thing possible 200 years ago um there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to reinvent how we practice government more efficiently more effectively yeah I mean those are those are great takes and um one more for me here is uh you know I hear you that it’s like a both end situation man but I’m going to push back on it and say all the attention is going to these big moonshots it’s
[00:24:00] going to elon’s going to space you know what’s SpaceX doing today you know Jeff is on Blue origin Sir Richard is a a Virgin Galactic and so you know it may be true these people are working on it but I think there’s something to be said about the um diversification of of focus and I think that that’s actually a threat a key threat to really solving these problems you know historically I think that we’ve seen when when people focus on something intensely that’s really when it gets done and that’s when the human a human Spirit shows up so how do you weigh in on the tradeoff that’s being made between you know going to space and also diverting attention to solving you know matters of our own Planet well first of all I think the definition of a moonshot which we talk about a lot on this program is doing something extraordinarily difficult that no one thinks is possible and I think having moonshots that people accomplish Inspire others to take Moon shots right so I think the whole ethos of what uh Elon is doing with SpaceX and you know
[00:25:01] we can rationalize space as giving us better Communications and Manufacturing things in orbit that you couldn’t manufacture in the gravity well of Earth and so forth but I call [ __ ] on that the real element of opening up space is inspiring kids to go into Math and Science it’s inspiring people to do things that otherwise they think is insane and crazy and it’s it’s not like we’re spending more than a fraction of a couple of percent on this area so it’s not it seems like it though am I mistaken it it might seem like it but you are mistaken uh the numbers are are minuscule you know the U I mean at the height of the Apollo program the US government was spending 2% it’s now I think it’s a quarter of a percent today so the number of relative Mount invested and it’s private Capital going in um and honestly if if uh if if Richard and Elon and Jeff want to spend money going into
[00:26:01] this I’m saying fantastic go for it build businesses uh businesses don’t forget are fail if there’s not a business market for them right it’s not like people don’t you know are going to uh use this if they don’t need it so if star if if uh if SpaceX and blue origin are succeeding it’s because there’s a need for it uh there are companies like Planet labs that are launching hundreds of satellites Imaging the entire planet uh all the time always so you can understand what’s going on in the environment you can see what’s going on in Ukraine moment to moment uh it’s giving eyes and democratizing access to visualizing the entire planet submeter all the time it’s making it a live and living organism so all of these things people don’t realize are coming from the space program but that’s not the reason I’m excited about it I’m excited about
[00:27:00] it because it’s uplifting the human spirit and it’s it’s the tip of the arrow where humanity is ultimately going and it’s giving us the ability to uh make ourselves a multiplanetary species which I think is uh is fundamental I think it’s a moral and ethical obligation that we have to the future of the human species and you know I I I can’t argue with that um while I’d like to I can’t and it’s I I I I’m I’m humble enough to admit that I don’t understand the problem in its entirety hey everybody I hope you’re enjoying this episode want to tell you about something I’ve been doing for years every quarter or so having a photus come to my home to draw Bloods to understand what’s going on inside my body and it was a challenge to get all the right blood draws and all the right tests done so I ended up co-founding a company that sends a fonus to my home to measure 40 different biomarkers every quarter put them up on a dashboard so I can see what’s in range what’s out of range and then get the
[00:28:00] right supplements medicines peptides hormones to optimize my health it’s something that I want for all my friends and family and I’d love it for you if you’re interested go to myli force.com back/ Peter to learn more let’s get back to the episode I’m going to summarize what I heard there and then I’m going to jump back to zero gravity um but you know what I heard is that uh the answer is a lot more beautiful than I expected it to be and it’s that you know when you focus on a moonshot that’s on your heart and it’s on your soul and spirit um you inspire others to pursue other moonshots that are on their heart soul and spirit and you know maybe somebody out there listening to this or maybe somebody out there just in general needs Elon to go to space as an as a for instance uh so they can figure out a different problem and maybe one of those challenges are are or more you know relevant challenge what we’re feeling now and I like your take on uplifting Humanity but you know jumping back into zero g for a sec um so you you met the head of the Beast
[00:29:04] she heard you were doing this in Russia she didn’t like it and she made sense of the fact that this is [ __ ] with you she empathized with it um and she effectively I’m assuming approved you guys to go now you know something I think I want to note and get out of here Peter is you know I think that the Americas were founded on the principle of risk and change and bravery love it and you know we lose that in a lot of bureaucracy and I feel as though you know this story is a great reminder of being a force for that as more than just an effort to do something fun like being in zero g but also to remind people of what we’re made of how much of that was driving you and how much of that drives you to this day first of all one of the lessons here is if I didn’t really deeply care about making this possible if there wasn’t this what I call massive transformative purpose of opening the space Frontier which was my Mt back then I would have given up on this 11-year
[00:30:00] Journey there was so many times over and over and over again where everyone said this is insane stop bagging your head against the wall you know this is never going to happen you’re running out of money and for me this was part of what it meant to be an entrepreneur and to be an Explorer and I agree the America’s the ethos of this nation was about risk-taking about making the impossible possible uh and there was an element of that for me um I wanted to I didn’t see space as something that a few select astronauts should be able to experience I wanted to make it accessible to anybody any kid who dreamed like I was a kid from 9 years old dreaming of this and that was a battle worth fighting for me and so I fought it now Mari and Blakey gives us permission and you have to understand this is after 11 years we’re running on fumes so what is this
[00:31:00] 19 or 2005 this is 2004 this is early 2004 and um I had landed a contract uh with uh Richard Branson’s television show called Rebel billionaire so this is you know the Donald had uh done his uh his show and Richard Branson gets to the show where he’s got uh these young entrepreneurs that need to prove them elves to him it was called Rebel billionaire it only did one season and so one of the episodes is going to be all of these these Rebel billionaire uh wannabes flying in zerog G and it was a contract for us to fly flights and we’re uh we’re excited about this because it’s all the money we need to launch the company and we are about to go and start flying and my Engineers tell me that the
[00:32:02] airplane is down for a maintenance issue now on a filming script you know it was we’re going to fly two flights on a Thursday and two flights on a Friday and they had paid us all the money in advance so Wednesday night I’m told the airplane’s not going to be ready to fly in the morning and so I have to call the the film team and say guys um to tell you this but we can’t make the morning flight and they’re like it’s okay we’ve got three flights we just need to get one of these flights and so Thursday afternoon we cancel the second flight Thursday night I am panicking because we’re if we have to return the money we are bankrupt and after 11 years it’s game over there’s a part that is broken down we’re in the middle of Las Vegas where the flights are taking place and there’s a part that needs to be found to fix the
[00:33:01] airplane and no one can find it I’m on the on the phone all night long we find one flight uh we find one part in New York and one part in Los Angeles and this is about 10:00 at night I’ll never forget I’m literally on the floor in a ball like this is ridiculous I buy a ticket and I have somebody get on a red eye from uh from New York and I have someone get in a car and start driving from Los Angeles trying to get the part to us we get the part at 6:00 a.m. the engineers are begin working on the airplane to get this is a compressor for this is a 727 and at the end of the day we end up uh getting approval on the repaired airplane at 4:00 on Friday afternoon now the the showrunners the everybody producing the show is pulling out out there here they’re about to pull you know pull it and it’s 4: it’s 4:30
[00:34:02] it’s 5: the airplane is working we start getting on the airplane and the pilot comes to me and goes we can’t fly the flight I’m like WTF me you can’t fly the flight we have just spent the last 72 hours going insane airplane’s working now he goes yeah but our Aviation regulations only are allowing us to fly parabolic flights during daylight hours and by the time we get up into the airspace it’s going to be after Dusk and we’re not allowed to legally fly and I look at him I’ll never forget I said if you don’t fly it’s game over we’re bankrupt and this will never fly again he looked at me and he goes we’re going to fly so our first flight and we’re past the statutes of limitations here I think was illegal but we got the flight off and it was great and uh you can go to Rebel billionaire and check it out but that was um you know I think the
[00:35:00] ultimate battle everything’s impossible till you make it possible and I think the definition of an entrepreneur ultimately is just battling against all the nose until you will it into existence that was insane I never wanted to face that again but I did so about a year later um the ansar ex prize had been won we had flown this private spaceship into space and I’m introduced to Stephen Hawking who I’m in awe of right anybody who loves science and and technology is an awe of Steven Hawking and I get a chance to meet with him and I’m meeting with him uh and he’s communicating through his assistant his nurses and through his computer and he had heard about the unari xprize um we were going to sequence his genome as part of a different X prise back then and he says to me can you fly me into space and I said Professor Hawking I wish I could I can’t but I can fly you into zerog G and he said yes on
[00:36:02] the spot he said yes I would love to do that and I’m thinking about this and I go well why don’t we actually turn your flight into a fundraiser for ALS L Garrick’s disease his the disease that he suffers from and he thought it was a great idea and we were going to uh basically create a fundraiser where people could fly with him in the airplane and would fund the flights and then the money left over would go towards the ALS uh research so I put out a press release the next day and I announced zerog G to fly Professor Steven Hawking the world’s expert in gravity into zero gravity as a fundraiser and I didn’t check with anybody before putting out the press release it was picked up in newspapers around the country and it was you know big news I get two phone calls one phone call is from our aircraft partner and the CEO the aircraft operator who’s flying our airplane for us providing the pilots and the maintenance turns to me and he goes
[00:37:01] you’re insane you’re going to fly the world’s expert in gravity and kill him and he was just beside me with the idea that we would fly this frail individual because you know the Euro G flights are not for the faint of heart and and he said but it’s your ass if you want to fly him uh you you’re risking the entire company here uh you can do it but the second phone call I get is from the FAA and they say your Federal Aviation regulations your operating specifications do not allow you to fly Stephen Hawking and I go what do you mean it doesn’t allow us to fly Stephen Hawking it’s like I’ve fought 11 years and battled every bureaucracy to get the ability to fly anybody into zero you know look at your operating specifications they require that you fly only quote able-bodied individuals in clearly Professor Hawking is not able-bodied and I’m like
[00:38:01] huh that sucks and then I had the presence of mind to ask one question I said who determines whether Stephen Hawking is able-bodied and the associate administrator there said well I assume it would be you know fa Physicians or uh it would be his doctors I said fantastic so I then turned around uh and uh the story is one you can’t make up I went and found a group of doctors who are Aerospace doctors and as well as his Physicians and asked them if they would be willing to write letters to FAA uh that step Hawking was able-bodied and that I would buy them malpractice insurance to protect them against any lawsuits that might follow uh and I did and I got the letters and i s in the FAA and they said like the head of the air Aircraft Company well it’s your risk if you want to do this we advise heavily against it
[00:39:02] and so we did um and it was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life so we end up flying a test flight the day before flying stepen Hawking we had gotten a high school student who weighed the same weight and height as Professor Hawking and we set up hold on time out you got how did you find this high school student oh we went so so we’re going to fly we’re going to fly uh Hawkings flight out of the Kennedy Space Center so the Kennedy Space Center has the longest runway in the United States it’s uh where the shuttle takes off and lands it’s many miles long and we figured it would be a great place uh to have this this flight um and and so we went to a local high school uh there in in Melbourne and we said listen Professor Hawking is this high he weighs this much you have a student who’s similar in height and weight we need a guinea pig cuz we’re going to set up an emergency room on board the airplane in
[00:40:02] case anything goes wrong and we need somebody who is going to be uh sort of a standin for him on these test flights and so we did we got this great 17-year-old kid who was uh you know was thrilled to be the stand in for stepen Hawking and we flew these flights and we had uh three Physicians and two nurses on the flight and we set it up where uh the Professor would be monitored with an EKG looking at his heart we’d be monitoring his blood pressure his partial pressure of oxygen his lungs and we flew the we flew this kid and we flew them through all kinds of if he broke if Steph Hawkin broke a leg if his lung collapsed if he had a heart attack all of the potential downsides which there were many and we assured ourselves that we had at least some means to deal with these things things so the next morning um Professor Hawking
[00:41:01] arrives uh we set up a press conference there is press from around the world there are hundreds of cameras there uh we’re on this large dasas that have been set up uh at Kennedy Space Center and uh Hawking steps up and he says listen and he’s doing this through his computer I’m doing this because I think the human race must go into space that if we don’t open the space Frontier we don’t have a future we have to become a multiplanetary species there are too many threats that are civilization ending that are potentially before us now I prefer the optimistic reasons for doing it versus dystopian reasons but you know let’s uh belt in suspenders here and at the end of that uh I announced to the world that we’re going to go and fly one parabolic Arc we’re going to give this world’s expert in gravity 30 seconds and that would be
[00:42:00] amazing and ultimately we had a plan that said if it goes well we’ll do two or three but before we go on this flight uh because it’s going to be an open channel of communication between the airplane and air traffic control we set up a bunch of code signals and uh as we’re flying the FAA gives us this block of airspace that’s 10,000 uh fet uh High between uh 2300 and 3,300 ,000 ft and 100 miles long and 10 miles wide and we’re the only airplane in that block of airspace and I set up with my head of operations three code signals one everything’s great two uh he’s injured and we’re coming back or three the worst of all cases right and we go up uh we set it up I look towards we have at I’m at Steven Hawkings head
[00:43:00] as he’s lying down and we’re flying straight and level at the other end at his feet is uh Byron lenberg two time astronaut uh and co-founder of zerog and I look to the three doctors the emergency room doctors who are on this plane with us they’ve got their equipment there they’re monitoring his heart rate his breathing rate his blood pressure his his partial pressure of oxygen and they’re like thumbs up all looks good we talk to the pilot and say okay let’s go for the first par and the way this works we’re at about 2300 uh 23,000 ft and the go into a slight dive to pick up velocity and you can feel going into a dive and then the pilot pulls up and to about 45 50° nose high and as pulling up you feel yourself getting heavier and heavier and heavier and Professor Hawking’s body is pushing down against the floor now we’re inside this airplane that has no seats for the first 100 feet it’s all foam padding on
[00:44:02] the ground foam padding above it so it’s safe it’s well lit there are 30 seats in the back that everyone who had you know donated to this flight is in the Back strapped in watching this and the cameras are there click click click and Professor Hawking as we come out of the top of this pull-up and push over to the top Byron and I gently lift Professor Hawking into zerog and then we pulled away and we’re watching him now Professor Hawking has very few muscles he can he can work none in his arms and legs um a tiny few in his mouth and in his eyes and for the first time ever I see him smile and there’s this smile that looks like this smile of a child and it was extraordinary it was captured on on film and as we start coming out of this parabolic Arc uh Byron and I slowly
[00:45:02] take him back down and we go into straight level flight again and I turn to the uh to the Physicians and I say you know are we good to go and they say yes he was perfect you’re good on the second and third Parabola so we do a second and third Parabola and uh it’s you know each time he’s floating by himself longer and longer sort of like just having this you know the best I could describe as a [ __ ] eitting grin on his face and we come back down and they’re like he’s Rock Solid he’s doing amazing I said okay let’s do a few more now we had promised just one Parabola and so I turned to his two nurses who are there and who had been talking with him and said what do you think should we continue because they said yes absolutely and in fact Professor Hawking wants you to you know twirl him around in zeroy and I’m like I’m like at this point I don’t know if they’re like just
[00:46:00] trying to get back at him for something or they really had had that conversation I said okay well let’s do this and so um the video footage uh which we should find uh has us basically lifting him up and spinning him around gently in zero g so we ended up doing eight parabas with Professor Hawking um we get back you know the code signal is he’s great he did awesome and we land and uh you know he had not wanted to do a post pright post a postflight press conference because he thought he’d be too tired for this and he was just so jazzed uh and he said it was the most extraordinary experience of his life and I remember I’ve gotten to know Lucy Hawking his daughter very well and she said it was one of the highlights of his life uh and it most definitely was for me and I’m so happy we didn’t kill stepen Hawking I mean what a what an honor and a badge of honor you wear um well I I I I I I feel like it just deserves a round
[00:47:01] of applause that story mate and um you know where is zero g today as a company is it still is it still in function can people go fly how much is it yeah it’s it’s uh it’s amazing zerog G is doing uh is doing great uh we’ve been flying let me do the calculations here since 2004 called 2005 so 17 years uh and we’re flying about 70 80 flights per year um uh people rent out the airplane for birthday parties weddings all kinds of things imagine that get married up there yeah you got 30 seconds to say I do uh we’ve had we’ve had the most you know incredible television shows filmed yeah if you go to the website’s gog.com and uh it really is how much is it unag um I think the price today is around 7 100 bucks $8,000 um and you know compared to know3
[00:48:01] $400,000 for a uh suborbital flight uh on on Virgin Galactic of blue origin uh you’re flying you do 15 parabas so you do three or four lunar parabas where when you go up commercially today you’ll feel what it’s like to walk on the moon so if you weigh 150 lbs the Moon is 1 16th your gravity so you go from 150 lb to 20 5 lbs and I love lunar parabas because you can do one our push-ups you can do back flips front flips you can sort of like launch and fly through the air then you can land on your feet reposition yourself to do something else so you do four of those and then you do about 11 z g parabis and you’re weightless inside the airplane 30 seconds at a shot so you’ve got about uh you know five six minutes of total zero g time which is actually more than you get in a suborbital flight on Virgin or um uh yeah but it’s 30 seconds at a time it’s a fraction of the
[00:49:00] price and you know I’ve done this flight now 100 times uh flying with friends and family I’ve taken my 11-year-old boys up who love it I’ve taken them up twice so if you can afford it you’ve got kids it is a it’s a life-changing experience and you’re in the middle of the magic show yeah I get motion sickness so I’m gonna have to uh I’m G to have to figure out whether or not it’s the vomit Comet for me or it’s something that I’m going to do in my lifetime but you know Ju Just in closing here Peter there’s a saying promise made promise kept um you know I know that your initial drive to do this was to begin to be a pivotal and you know maybe it’s overstating to call it pivotal I don’t think it’s overstating but to be a role player in the grander scheme of things and opening up the space Frontier have there been positive signs and affirmations for you after this company’s existence to confirm that that’s that’s been true yeah I mean between zerog G and xprize you know we’re seeing today uh incredible Renaissance in the commercial
[00:50:01] space industry you know it’s a trillion dollar industry between all the companies right there are so many startup rocket companies and small rocket companies and of course uh we see SpaceX and we see blue origin and Virgin Galactic and all of those companies and you have to remember back in the early 90s when when I had started and co-founded zogg and prise this didn’t exist it was all government people believed this was something only the government programs could do and I think you know to some small part whether it was changing the laws and regulations for a private commercial space flight or attracting public attention or bringing Capital to the table we lit a fuse and uh it’s not a genie that’s going back into the bottle I think we’re on the edge of the human race opening up into space irreversibly you know I make this akin to when the first lungfish moved out of the oceans onto land um we are at
[00:51:02] the edge of that precipice where we’re moving off of the earth into space irreversibly uh and it’s an extraordinary time to be alive that’s a really great analogy actually it uh it feels just as frightening to me to imagine the life for the lungfish to survive on on on uh on Earth then from water then it does for us to survive uh in space and it does our planet but um what a brilliant conversation you know hats off to you sir and you know I think for anybody listening it just goes to show when you follow your moonshot um the first second third and first and fourth order World Order consequences are completely unbeknownst to you um but if you fight hard enough um you just might get there and and from what I understand um years later Sir Richard Branson uh picked up some of the rights that you fought so so hard to get for the better part of a decade to uh leverage for for Galactic is that is that accurate yeah it’s another great story uh the Ansari xprize birthed uh
[00:52:02] spaceship one the first commercial space you know human space flight uh and Richard bought the rights uh from that competition from uh from Mojave Aerospace Ventures to build spaceship 2 and uh you know it’s been interesting right watching Richard um watching Jeff Bezos who I’ve known since College Jeff was the president of uh the Princeton chapter of of said students exploration development of space a nonprofit I had started uh while at MIT and was the chairman of but that’s time for another story some other time cool all right well this has been another episode of moon shots and mindsets with Peter D Mendes my name is Nick I’m but Peter’s producer and uh Peter thanks for being with us today man this was a lot of fun my pleasure Nick always a pleas all right adios take [Music] care [Music]