My body is suspended midair, and it's all I can do to breathe steadily. Everything around me is whitewashed. The padded ceiling and floor have blurred. I'm not consciously twitching a muscle, yet I'm moving. And I'm laughing — uncontrollably — because my mind cannot accept the absurdity of what my body knows to be true: I'm flying.
I am onboard a Boeing 727 owned by the Zero Gravity Corp. It's the only commercial plane that has been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration to take passengers on a journey that re-creates the weightlessness of space. Without leaving the atmosphere, the aircraft — known as G-Force One — flies upward, then lunges toward the earth in a parabolic pattern, creating a zero-gravity environment in its cabin.