Among their ranks was Cheryl Howard, the actress whose husband Ron took several zero gravity flights when he was directing the film Apollo 13. On this day, however, Mr Howard had just come along to support his wife before the flight and would be remaining with his feet firmly on Earth.

Astronauts of course conduct their work in a zero gravity environment thousands of miles up in space.

But for $4,950 (2,939), the same sensation can by yours on the Zero Gravity Corporations (ZERO-G) G-FORCE ONE, a modified jet whose pilots induce weightlessness through a series of mid-air manoeuvres called parabolas.

Nasa puts its astronauts through a much more rigorous version of the same flights as part of their training, deliberately pushing participants to the stage of nausea in what has been colourfully nicknamed the vomit comet.

That detail was causing some preflight nerves, even though ZERO-Gs president Terese Brewster and her team of instructors assured us that we would not be subjected to anything as intense, during our briefing at an airport hotel.

As someone who long ago swore never to ride another rollercoaster and has often felt nauseous on boats, the prospect of motion sickness still worried me as I prepared boldly to go where few have gone before.

But within an hour, I was indeed floating, without any stomach churning discomfort, in the remarkable world of zero gravity as we repeatedly dived 12,000 feet before then being pinned to the matted floor by the gravitational force (G force) when we accelerated back up to the top of the arc.

Philip Sherwell enjoying some "blissful exhilaration" (STEVE BOXALL/ZERO-G)

Around me, my fellow passengers were pirouetting and somersaulting, not to mention delivering passable impressions of Superman flying through the air, arm punched out ahead.

In my case, it felt that I was tumbling and flailing rather than executing elegant acrobatic turns, but the experience was still one of blissful exhilaration as we shared an experience known only by a tiny fraction of the worlds population.

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Space tourists on Zero-G's 'vomit comet': incredible flight to weightless world of space travel