Intel defies gravity
posted by Bryan Rhoads on January 09, 2008
Intel invited 35 lucky thrill-seekers for a once-in-a-lifetime Extreme “Zero G” flight today in Las Vegas.
It’s the same flight that NASA uses to train astronauts and where the film Apollo 13 filmed the weightless scenes of Tom Hanks and others.
An international crew consisted of contest and sweepstakes winners from around the world (Australia, France Germany, Italy, Korea, PRC, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and the USA). In conjuction w/ the flight, last night Intel also gave away Zero G flight suits at the hottest blogger party on the Strip.
Among the crew were Intel’s Mooly Eden shown here w/ a floating tablet PC demonstrating how Intel “defies gravity” with laptop performance. Eden is vice president and general manager of the Intel Mobile Platforms Group.
I also think I saw blogger/Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls and Andru Edwards of GearLive. Did Scoble have a conflict? :(… (Hey Robert… Good to see you again at the party last night).
Here are some more shots taken by Rohit Bhargava - he’s also posted up the entire day’s flight up on our Flikr site… Thanks for sharing… and I hope that the “Vomit Comet” didn’t hold up to its name.
Looks like a lot of fun.
Comments (3)
tagged: centrino, CES, CES 2008, extreme, Intel, intel corp, laptop, Zero G
Jan 10 | paul said:
Why wasn’t I invited?
Jan 10 | georgete said:
Uh lah lah ! That’s fun.
Jan 11 | Tim Takeuchi said:
Great Post Bryan. I was lucky enough to get a seat on board and it was an amazing experience. The day started at 6AM. I grabbed my Centrino Duo-powered Flybook VM and headed to meet the rest of the flyers. After an hour of training at the Zero G training center, we were off to the air strip. I was lucky to sit next to Doc Searls on the way to our flight zone over the Pacific. We talked about geology (that was unexpected)! I met winners from around the world (housewives, journalists, a pro gamer from overseas too), all a bit unsure of the experience before us. Our first parabola had us screaming and laughing like kids and 14 parabolas later, the experience was complete. We got some great shots with the “Flybook” (get it?). Hard to really explain the how much fun it really was but this video should speak volumes. I’ve been having dreams about lifting out of my bed, floating into the sky. I could draw parallels between the extreme act of weightlessness and Intel’s extreme products, both allowing you to soar to new heights, but that’s another post.