Brothers change into supermen on space holiday; CITY MAN BLASTS OFF ON ZERO GRAVITY TRIP.Byline: By ADRIAN BUTLER A LIVERPOOL man with cerebral palsy cerebral palsy (sərē`brəl pôl`zē), disability caused by brain damage before or during birth or in the first years, resulting in a loss of voluntary muscular control and coordination. became an astronaut for a day. Gerard Ryan, from West Derby, floated in zero gravity zero gravity n. The condition of apparent weightlessness occurring when the centrifugal force on a body exactly counterbalances the gravitational attraction on it. on a special flight above Florida. The 55-year-old is one of only 3,000 people who have been on one of the flights, others include physicist Stephen Hawking Noun 1. Stephen Hawking - English theoretical physicist (born in 1942) Hawking, Stephen William Hawking and film star Tom Hanks Noun 1. Tom Hanks - United States film actor (born in 1956) Hanks, Thomas J. Hanks in Apollo 13. His brother Paul, who paid for the three flights - costing pounds 2,000 each - for the pair of them and for his wife, said: "Up there, disabilities count for nothing, you're as strong as Superman." Paul's wife Melanie, who sufferers from vertigo, suggested the trip, and her husband agreed - on the condition she came with them. He said: "Gerard has always wanted to do a parachute jump, but I hadn't figured out a way to do it, so we decided to do this." They travelled to the Kennedy Space Centre and went through zero gravity training before going up in the converted Boeing plane. After climbing to around 30,000ft, the aircraft uses a technique called parabolic par·a·bol·ic also par·a·bol·i·cal adj. 1. Of or similar to a parable. 2. Of or having the form of a parabola or paraboloid. flight to achieve weightlessness weightlessness, the absence of any observable effects of gravitation. This condition is experienced by an observer when he and his immediate surroundings are allowed to move freely in the local gravitational field. - the same method used to train astronauts and to film Apollo 13. It free-falls through the sky, then climbs again, giving passengers a minute of weightlessness at a time. Father-of-three Paul said: "They started us on Martian gravity, then we tried lunar gravity, where you can do press-ups on one finger. "Gerard was lying still on the floor and I picked him up and spun him round like a ball. Once he was up, you couldn't get the smile off his face, and he hasn't stopped talking about it since." After the flight, Gerard had the holiday of a lifetime, packing in sightseeing and a helicopter ride. Gerard and Paul were born off Scotland Road and, while his brother and sister-in-law run their IT business from a farmhouse in Burgundy, France, Gerard lives in sheltered housing in West Derby. Paul said of his brother: "He can walk, talk, sing and play on the guitar - he's played at the Cavern with a group of disabled people." CAPTION(S): FREEFALL: Paul, Gerard and Melanie on their zero gravity flight in Florida; TAKE-OFF: Boarding the NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. KC-135 aircraft at the Kennedy Space Centre |
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