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Your Playbook for Going Big,

Creating Wealth and Impacting the World

Session 7.2: Zero G

& Stephen Hawking
Xponential Playbook 131

Session 7.2: Zerowww.getwsodownload.com

G & Stephen Hawking
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An overnight success after 10 years of hard work. —Peter Diamandis

Weightlessness is an absence of stress and strain resulting from external forces.

Gravity is an external force that gives us weight, whereas zero gravity gives
us weightlessness.
The Zero Gravity Corporation, or ZERO-G, has the vision of making weightlessness available to
everybody. While pursuing this vision was exciting, this journey was very difficult for Peter.
Growing up, Peter was inspired by images
of NASA’s early KC-135 airplanes. This Zero G
airplane would climb up at 45 degrees, nose
up, and as it’s pushed over the top, those
inside would be weightless for about 25 to
30 seconds. Peter tried everything he could
to go on this airplane, but was repeatedly
told no. Instead, Peter started a company to
be able to offer people the opportunity to fly
in zero gravity commercially.
Although Peter founded ZERO-G in May 1993, the company wasn’t operational until September
2004. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations would not allow this type of flight, and
repeatedly denied Peter’s requests. Refusing to give up, after 11 years, Peter finally gained approval
from Marion Blakey, the head of the FAA, for his company to become operational.

STEPHEN HAWKING
The times where you are able to take the biggest risks and go for your heart’s passion can be the
most rewarding in life. Those are the moments that you remember; you don’t remember the times
you sat back and didn’t take the risk.
In 2007, Peter flew Stephen Hawking into zero gravity. When Peter first announced his intent to fly
Stephen into zero g, the FAA shut him down because, according to the FAA, Hawking was not able-
bodied. Hawking has sensation throughout his body, but can only move a few muscles in his face.
Everything else is fully paralyzed. After purchasing malpractice insurance and encouraging enough
doctors to write letters to the FAA, Peter finally got the green light.
At a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center, they announced their intent to do a single
parabolic arc. This would give Stephen Hawking, the world’s foremost expert in gravity, the
experience of 30 seconds of zero g. If it went well, they would continue to do two or three more arcs.
During the press conference, Hawking was asked why he was
doing the flight. He replied:
“Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out
by a disaster… I think the human race doesn’t have a future if
it doesn’t go into space. I therefore want to encourage public
interest in space.”

© 2016 SUCCESS Partners Holding Co. All rights reserved.

Xponential Playbook 132

Special arrangements were made www.getwsodownload.com

to accommodate Hawking. He was brought up onto the airplane
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with a forklift, and there was an entire emergency room on board the airplane. Peter and his
cofounders were on board alongside Stephen. They lifted him up slowly into the first zero g
parabola and then they let him float.
With a thumbs-up from his doctors as they started
to come down, the pilots went for a second and
third parabola. On the third, they floated an apple in
homage to Sir Isaac Newton, as Hawking holds the
same chair at Cambridge that Sir Isaac Newton held
hundreds of years earlier.
After flying a total of eight parabolas, Hawking’s entire
team said that they had never seen him smile more
in the last 40 years. That smile made the front page
around the world. This risk that Peter took with Hawking
enabled the next steps to overcome restrictions for
everyone to fly in zero g.

Anything big and bold is hard.

People are going to say “no,” so how you react is everything.

© 2016 SUCCESS Partners Holding Co. All rights reserved.