SO much for the theory, now he’s heading for space . . . Stephen Hawking, the physicist and author of A Brief History of Time, will briefly escape the earthly confines of his wheelchair this week when he makes a weightless flight at 32,000ft aboard a simulated “spaceship”, writes Maurice Chittenden.

The Cambridge professor takes off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launchpad for moon shots and the space shuttle. For bursts of 25 seconds at a time, the world’s best known expert on the cosmos will shake off the bounds of gravity and float around an aircraft cabin.

It should leave him feeling freer than he has done since he developed the muscle-wasting motor neurone disease as a student.

Two doctors, two nurses and a graduate assistant, all strapped down, will use their hands to guide him around the chamber and try to ensure he does not injure himself by colliding with equipment. Video cameras and a photographer will capture this entry into aeronautical history.

Hawking, 65, is the first person with severe disabilities to make such a trip. It will prepare him to go into real space in 2009 as a passenger aboard one of Sir Richard Branson’s first commercial suborbital missions.

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