Stephen Hawking will travel to space on board Richard Branson's ship, professor says

Stephen Hawking has been making news recently with talk of the cosmologist and physicist going into space. Hawking will be going into space on board of Richard Branson's spaceship the Virgin Galactic. Professor Hawking told Good Morning Britain that he'd never dreamed he'd be able to head into space, but when Richard Branson offered him a seat on the Virgin Galactic, the professor immediately said yes.

Stephen William Hawking, who was born in January of 1942 is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. The professor's scientific works include a collaboration with Roger Penrose on the gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity along with the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, which is often called Hawking radiation. Stephen Hawking was the first to set forth a theory of cosmology that explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Professor Hawking has a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis also known as ALS. The disease is also known as motor neuron disease or Lou Gehrig's disease and it has gradually paralyzed the professor over the decades.

The Virgin Galactic is Richard Branson's spaceflight company, that hopes to soon bring people into space on commercial missions. Mr. Branson had suggested that the spaceflight might be able to complete a flight in 2009, but the plan has been thrown off by all sorts of problems and disasters. The company is developing a commercial spacecraft and hopes to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists and suborbital launches for space science missions. Virgin Galactic plans to provide orbital human spaceflights as well. SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's suborbital spacecraft, is air launched from beneath a carrier airplane known as White Knight Two. There have only been 558 People who have gone to space. Virgin Galactic is hoping to offer that chance to everyone.

Since the dawn of the space age, there have been only 558 humans have traveled above the Earth's atmosphere and into space. Throughout fifty years of human spaceflight, the national space agencies in the countries of the United States, China, and China have inspired the world. But because government space agencies are not asked to help ordinary citizens to become astronauts, most of the planet's seven billion people have had no opportunity or way to experience space and all of its possibilities for themselves, regardless of their passion or talents. This is where Virgin Galactic hopes to chang all that. Virgin Galactic will offer the opportunity for anyone to go into space. To get the chance to fly on the Virgin Galactic the company is happy to receive applications from individuals who share in their aims of opening space to all and will add to the diversity and value of the space group overall. The application process requires completion and submission of the Virgin Galactic Future Astronaut Application Form which you can find on the company's site. Once you apply, you have the opportunity to ask plenty of questions and discuss all aspects of community membership, and your spaceflight reservation with their Astronaut Relations Team as your application is being processed. Something like this doesn't come cheap as a seat into space with the Virgin Galactic and membership of the Future Astronaut community requires the full price of $250,000 USD to be paid as an up front deposit. This is just one of the trending stories you will find on the Independent site. The site has all sorts of news, politics, celebrity rumors, culture, business, celebrity recent news and more. **