EP #2 I Almost Killed Stephen Hawking (True Story of Flying Stephen Hawking to Space) w/ Peter Diamandis

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Edu Byron and I gently lift Professor Hawking into zero G. And then we pulled away. And we're watching him now. Professor Hawking has very few muscles. He can work none in his arms and legs. 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 the smile of a child and a massive tremor. 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. Everybody, welcome back to Mindsets and Moonshots. Nick, good to see you, my friend.

Yeah, good to see you, man. I've seen a lot of you. Yeah, which I, which I enjoy. But hey, we have a good one for you folks today, and I'm just going to get right into it. I heard in a meeting recently that you almost killed Stephen Hawking. Is this true?

Let's just say we put him in a dangerous situation when we flew the world's expert in gravity into zero gravity. Long story, but I do remember a couple of phone calls when people heard that we're going to do this like, Peter, you're insane. You're going to kill the world's expert, you know, the top physicists on the planet. And 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 zero G 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 zero 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, 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 zero G airplane? So it turns out since the late 1950s, NASA has been using a weightless aircraft. It's a zero G aircraft. I 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 there was there 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 a 45 degree 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 weigh 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 parabolas during a flight. And I was like, I want to do this. There's the nine year old kid in me saying I want to go experience weightlessness. So I go to my friends. In that case, it was two incredible individuals. Byron Lichtenberg, who had flown twice on the space shuttle, and then Ray Kronice, who had been flying 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. And I was like really pissed. And you know, for me, you know, no simply means begin one level higher. And so I ended up saying, well, if I want to go so much, I bet you other people want to go on zero g too. 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 and the more who'd want to get involved. Long story short, we kick it off and I figure this will be a piece of cake. 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. We had to go through the faa. And I remember the first time we went to go and meet with the faa. At the end of the day, 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 seatbelts, 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 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 space? This just seems so out of reach. This seems incredibly difficult. Talk to me about how you even got in front of them. How did this idea mature to a point where you were somebody who can actually demand a conversation with them?

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. One of the things that we did was, you know, and this is as an entrepreneur, you find 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? And we ended up finding a gentleman who was now a lawyer who had previously been part of the faa. He was the general counsel from the faa. Now he's in private practice. And we hired him 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 be allowed to do this. And we went in with him and we ended up pitching our case. And I'd never been so frustrated in my life. When you run like full steam into bureaucracy, and the realization was that there was no benefit to the FAA supporting this. It was only downside. And this is a lot of challenges in all of the government agencies. Like, if you want to do something that's outside the normal bounds, 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. 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 yourself up and say, well, what about this? And what about this? I remember one time I said, well, maybe we're going to make flying in 0G a religious rite. And so we're going to create the religion of Zog. 0G? Wait, is that serious?

You were actually going to create an actual religion?

Well, it was like. It's like the FAA 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 American Indian reserve where, you know, the laws are slightly different. We were looking at, you know, having actually a religious practice that would, you know, have the FAA approve this. I remember saying to myself, listen, when I was talking to the. Pretty much the top level, the associate administrators. You guys are either going to retire or die before I give up. And it was that level of. Of intensity, of passion. It was like I refused. 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 Zurich with me. Hey, thanks for listening to Moonshots and Mindsets. I want to take a second to tell you about a company that I love this. 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 of 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 in learn more by going to Levels. Link backslash. Peter. Levels will give you an extra two months of membership. It's something that is critical for the future of your longevity. All right, let's get back to the conversation in the episode.

What were some of the things that the FAA was telling you, man, that you thought was just bullshit 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 you came to them.

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 writing you law to prevent it. And one of the federal aviation regulations was if the airplane is going above 30 degrees nose up or, or above 30 degrees nose down, it is a, it's considered a man that.

Anybody listening? We got some construction happen in the background. I'm a big fan saying that there's two seasons in the world there's construction and then other seasons, and I'm dying to get to the other side of it. So bear with us, folks. We got somebody living in reverse near Peter at the moment. But we're gonna make, we're gonna make the.

Anytime you fly the airplane above or below 30 degrees nose up, and as you're climbing or down, it's, it's called air aerobatic flight. And if you're flying someone in aerobatic flight, you're required to wear a parachute. So the FAA 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 so hold on, pause.

Hold on. I'm sorry to catch. 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 idiocrity 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 in the middle of a, of a magic show. And you know, in the 90s, I actually went to post Soviet Russia and we had started a company called Space Adventures that were taking people on zero G flights in Moscow at the Zukovsky Air Force Base. And we'd get inside of a Ilyushin 76, one of these giant cargo post Soviet cargo airplanes, and you'd put on a parachute 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 cool, but it was not the kind of experience I expected to be offering in the US and it was just. It was not what we desired. And plus, 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 work.

Fair enough. Fair enough.

And so we ended up 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 with all kinds of strain gauges on board the airplane and flying it to the edges of its capabilities. And we did, and we ended up getting all the data, and ultimately, in our opinion, gained 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 FAA 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, Marion Blakey. She was. She had this beautiful Texas drawl. And I sat down with her in her office, 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 zero G, 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 blue in the face. And that was the case here.

I really want to pick that apart for a sec. That is fucking 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 it. And so, you know, the moment that. The moment that you hear that, oh, you're going to Russia to do it, ah, let's bring you back home and get you. Okay.

Get you. Absolutely. And that was a. That was a planned conversation, 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 early 50s through 2000s, NASA had been doing this safely in an old military airplane. And here we were upgrading to a much newer commercial aircraft and having proven all of the safety, there was just no one willing to say yes. And, and she got that and she finally approved it. And you know, zero G now and you can go to gozero g.com for to get details. It flies throughout the United States. We have flown thousands and thousands of flight without incident. It's extraordinarily safe.

So I want to take this to a broader view for a moment. Peter 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 the show, but why does that matter, you know, to someone like me and I can imagine folks listening who have their own set of challenges that they want to face 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 when I flew Stephen Hawking into zero G and we'll talk about that, I remember we're on stage at a pre press conference just before we're about to take off. We have news media from around the world. The cameras are rolling. 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 osteoporosis, you can break all the bones in your body. You've got severe pulmonary and cardiac issues. 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 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 threat. If we care about the long term survival of the human race, we need to become a multi planetary species. This is very much a through line. For me personally, for Elon Musk, for Jeff Bezos and for Stephen Hawking, the other side of the equation is it's about inspiring greatness in humanity. It's about having a full and infinite frontier that we can go to. When the Europeans moved to the Americas and moved society from the Old world to the New World, it was to create this opportunity for everybody. And it has. There's incredible science and, and historical research that shows the amount of breakthroughs and progress that's made 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. I'm thankful that 500 years ago people risked their lives to come and open up 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, this is what we humans do. We have a, 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 or making the human race more resilient 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.

Let me pick that apart for a second, then I'm going to get back to the story. But this feels like a worthy rabbit hole. What do you have to say to the folks, Peter? And 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 not devote their time and energy to solve the problems of our planet such as climate change, education, food, hunger, etc. 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, healthcare, education, and I spend all, you know, 98% of my time on that. But we have to be spending some portion of our time looking beyond that, right? You know, I talk about existential threats a lot and I do this with my X Prize hat on 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 SARS COV2 virus and COVID19 pandemic is actually a warm up act. It was a small glimpse of what could happen if it had a much higher mortality rate. It would have been a hell of a lot worse. And so hopefully it's a wake up call. Hopefully 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 location. You know, like the Spanish Flu 100 years ago did, or the Black Plague or any of those. The second existential threat is in fact asteroid impacts. I keep on screaming this and I hope it doesn't happen, but you know, 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 near Earth asteroids. And one of those asteroids does have to be a dinosaur killer like we had 66 million years ago. It could be a fraction of the size just landing on top of Manhattan or Moscow or Beijing. It would shut down economic markets around the world. It can also have a multitude of other. It just goes on and on. I think about asteroid impacts as I love the phrase God asking how's your space program doing? We need to be able to protect ourselves in that regard. Then at the end of the day, everything we hold of value on Earth, metals, minerals, energy, real estate is in infinite quantities in 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 in the virtual worlds, which I think is very cool. We'll also start new nation states in space. Whether it's on Mars, which Elon wants, or whether it's going to be in space colonies, which Jeff wants, either one is going to allow us to practice new forms. I mean, I'm a proud American, right. I'm a libertarian capitalist if I was 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. 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 great takes. And one more for me here is, I hear you that it's like a both and situation man, but going to push back on that and Say all the attention is going to these big moonshots. It's going to, Elon's going to space. You know, what SpaceX doing today, you know, Jeff is on Blue Origin, Sir Richard is 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 diversification 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, human spirit shows up. So how do you weigh in on the trade off 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 moonshots. Right. So I think the whole ethos of what Elon is doing with SpaceX and you know, 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 bullshit 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 might seem like it, but you are mistaken. The numbers are, are minuscule. You know, the, I mean, at the height of the Apollo program, the U.S. 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. And honestly, if, if, if, if Richard and Elon and Jeff want to spend money going into this, I'm saying fantastic, go for it. Build businesses, 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 use this if they don't need it. So if Star, if, if, if SpaceX and Blue Origin are succeeding, it's because there's a need for it. There are companies like Planet Labs that are launching hundreds of satellites Imaging the entire planet 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. It's giving eyes and democratizing access to visualizing the entire planet. Sub meter all the time. It's making it alive and living organism. 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 it because it's uplifting the human spirit and it's the tip of the arrow where humanity is ultimately going to. And it's giving us the ability to make ourselves a multi planetary species, which I think is fundamental. I think it's a moral and ethical obligation that we have to the future of the human species.

And I can't argue with that. While I'd like to, I can't. And it's just 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. I want to tell you about something I've been doing for years. Every quarter or so, having a phlebotomist 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 phlebotomist 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 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 mylifeforce.com 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. But you know, what I heard is that 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, 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, so they can figure out a Different problem. And maybe one of those challenges are more, you know, relevant challenge to what we're feeling now. And I like your take on uplifting humanity, but, you know, jumping back into zero G for a sec. So you, you met the head of the beast. She heard you were doing this in Russia, she didn't like it, and she made sense of the fact that this is bullshit with you. She empathized with it 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 being a force for that as more than just an effort to do something fun like be 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 MTP back then, I would have given up on this 11 year journey. There was so many times over and over and over again where everyone said, this is insane, stop banging 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 is, the ethos of this nation was about risk taking, about making the impossible possible. And there was an element of that for me. 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 Maran Blakey gives us permission. And you have to understand, this is after 11 years, we're running on fumes.

So what is this, 19 or 2005?

This is 2004. This is early 2004 and I had landed a contract with Richard Branson's television show called Rebel Billionaire. So this is, you know, the Donald had done his show and Richard Branson gets this show where he's got these young entrepreneurs that need to prove themselves to him. It was called Rebel Billionaire and only did one season. And so one of the episodes is going to be all of these rebel billionaire wannabes flying in zero G. And it was a contract for us to fly for flights. And 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 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 film team and say, guys, hate 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 is 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 airplane and no one can find it. I'm on the, on the phone all night long. We find one flight, we find one part in New York and one part in Los Angeles. And this is about 10 o' clock 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, 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 6am 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 getting approval on the repaired airplane at 4 o' clock on Friday afternoon. Now the, the showrunners, the everybody producing the show is pulling out their hair. They're about to pull, you know, pull it. And it's 4, it's 4:30, 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? You can't fly the flight? We have just spent the last 72 hours going insane. Airplanes 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 and 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 you can go to Rebel Billionaire and check it out. But that was, you know, I think, the 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 no's until you will it into existence. That was insane. I never wanted to face that again, but I did. So about a year later, the Ansari X 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 technology is in awe of Stephen Hawking. And I get a chance to meet with him, and I'm meeting with him and he's communicating through his assistant, his nurses, and through his computer. And he had heard about the Ansari X Prize. We were going to sequence his genome as part of a different X Prize 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 zero G. And he said, yes on 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, Lou Gehrig's disease, his disease that he suffers from. And he thought it was a great idea. And we were going to 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 research. So I put out a press release the next day, and I announced Zero G to fly Professor Stephen 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 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, 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 zero G flights are not for the faint of heart. And he said, but it's your ass if you want to fly him. You're risking the entire company here. 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 G. Note. Look at your operating specifications. They require that you fly only, only, quote, able bodied individuals. And clearly Professor Hawking is not able bodied. And I'm like, 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, FAA physicians or it would be his doctors. I said, fantastic. So I then turned around and the story is one you can't make up. I went and found a group of doctors who were aerospace doctors and as well as his physicians and asked them if they would be willing to write letters to the FAA that Stephen Hawking was able bodied and that I would buy them malpractice insurance to protect them against any lawsuits that might fall. Follow. And I did. And I got the letters and I sent them the FAA and they said, like the head of the aircraft company, well, it's your risk if you want to do this. We advise heavily against it. And so we did. And it was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. So we end up flying a test flight. The day before flying Stephen Hawking, we had gotten a high school student. 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 to Monkey.

So. So we're gonna fly. We're gonna fly Hawking's flight out of the Kennedy Space Center. So the Kennedy Space center has the longest Runway in the United States. It's where the shuttle takes off and lands. It's many miles long. And we figured it would be a great place to have this, this flight. And, and so we went to a local high school there 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 because we're going to set up an emergency room on board the airplane in case anything goes wrong. And we need somebody who is going to be sort of a stand in for him on these test flights. And so we did. We got this great 17 year old kid who was thrilled to be the stand in for Stephen Hawking. We flew these flights and we had three physicians and two nurses on the flight. We set it up where the professor would be monitored with an ekg, looking at his heart, we'd be monitoring his blood pressure, his partial pressure of oxygen, oxygen, his lungs. And we flew this kid and we flew them through all kinds of if Stephen Hawking 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. So the next morning Professor Hawking arrives, we set up a press conference. There's press from around the world, there are hundreds of cameras there. We're on this large dais that had been set up at Kennedy Space center and 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 multi planetary 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 the dystopian reasons, but let's belt in suspenders here. At the end of that, I announced to the world that we're going to go and fly one parabolic arc. We're going to give this world expert in gravity, 30, 30 seconds and that would be 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, because it's going to be an open channel communication between the airplane and air traffic control, we set up a bunch of code signals and as we're flying the FAA gives us this block of airspace that's 10,000ft high, between 2303, 300,000ft 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, he's injured and we're coming back or three, the worst of all cases. We go up, we set it up. I look towards, I'm at Stephen Hawking's head as he's lying down and we're flying straight and level. At the other end, at his feet is Byron Lichtenberg, two time astronaut and co founder of Zero G. 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 parabola. And the way this works, we're at about 20, 300, 23,000ft and going to 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 degrees, 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 hundred feet. It's all foam padding on the ground, foam padding above. So it's safe, it's well lit. There are 30 seats in the back that everyone who had 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 Zero G and then we pull away. And we're watching him now. Professor Hawking has very few muscles. He can work none in his arms and legs, 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 the smile of a child. And it was extraordinary, it was captured on film. And as we start coming out of this parabolic arc, Byron and I slowly take him back down and we go into straight level flight again. And I turn to the, 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 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 is a shit eating 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 twirl him around in zero G. I'm like, at this point, I don't know if they're like just 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 the video footage which we should find has us basically lifting him up and spinning him around gently in zero G. So we ended up doing eight parabolas with Professor Hawking. We get back, you know, the code signal is he's great, he did awesome. And we land. And you know, he had not wanted to do a post, the post flight press conference because he thought he'd be too tired for this and he was just so jazzed. And he said it was 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. And it most definitely was for me. And I'm so happy we didn't kill Stephen Hawking.

I mean, what a, what an honor and a badge of honor. You wear what I, I, I, I feel like it just deserves a round of applause that story, mate. And you know, where is Zero G today as a company? Is it still, is it still?

Yeah.

Can people go fly? How much is it?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. Zero G is doing, is doing great. We've been flying, let me do the calculations here since 2004, call 2005. So 17 years and we're flying about 70, 80 flights per year. People rent out the airplane for birthday parties, weddings, all kinds of things. Imagine that, weddings. People go get married up there. Yeah. You got 30 seconds to say I do. We've had the most incredible television shows filmed. Yeah. If you go to the, the website's go0g.com and it really is.

How much is it?

I think the price today is around 7,500 bucks. $8,000 and you know, compared to, you know, three, $400,000 for a suborbital flight on, on Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, you're flying, you do 15 parabolas. So you do three or four lunar parabolas. Where when you go up commercially today you'll feel what it's like to walk on the moon. So if you weigh 150 pounds, the moon is one sixth your gravity. So you go from £150 to £25. And I love lunar parabolas because you can do one arm push ups, you can do backflips, 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 we do about 11 0g parabolis and, and you're weightless inside the airplane, 30 seconds at a shot. So you've got about, you know, five, six minutes of total zero G time, which is actually more than you get in a suborbital flight on Virgin or. Yeah, but it's 30 seconds at a time, it's a fraction of the price. And you know, I've done this flight now a hundred times flying with friends and family. I've taken my 11 year old boys up who love it. I've taken it up twice. So if you can afford it and 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, I'm gonna have to figure out whether or not it's the vomit comet for me or it's something that I'm gonna do in my lifetime. But you know, just in closing here, Peter, there's a saying, promise made, promise kept. 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 0G and Xprize, you know, we're seeing today incredible renaissance in the commercial 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 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 0G and Xprize, 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 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. We are at the edge of that precipice where we're moving off of the Earth into space irreversibly, and it's an extraordinary time to be alive.

That's a really great analogy, actually. Feels just as frightening to me to imagine the life for the Lungfish to survive on. On. On. On Earth, then from water than it does for us to survive in space than it does our planet. But 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, the first, second, third, and first and fourth order world order consequences are completely unbeknownst to you. But if you fight hard enough, you just might get there.

And.

And from what I understand, years later, Sir Richard Branson and picked up some of the rights that you fought so, so hard to get for the better part of a decade to leverage for Virgin Galactic. Is that. Is that accurate?

Yeah, it's another great story. The Ansari X Prize Birthed Spaceship 1, the first commercial space, you know, human spaceflight. And Richard bought the rights from that competition from. From Mojave Aerospace ventures to build SpaceShipTwo. And, you know, it's been interesting, right, watching Richard, watching Jeff Bezos, who I've known since college. Jeff was the president of the Princeton chapter of said Students of Exploration Development of Space, a nonprofit I had started 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 Moonshots and Mindsets with Peter Diamandez. My name is Nick. I'm but Peter's producer. And Peter, thanks for being with us today, man. This was a lot of fun.

My pleasure, Nick. Always a pleasure.

Adios.

Take care.