What child has not dreamed of breaking free from gravity’s chains and floating, weightless, above earth’s surface?

That fantasy, long-since dismissed in the adult mind as a violation of nature, came true this week for a small group of scientists, French parliamentarians and journalists, including this reporter.

The lucky few experienced a dozen 30-second episodes of pure, head-spinning zero-gravity aboard an Airbus A300, owned by French aeronautics firm Novespace and run by France’s National Centre for Space Studies.

Make no mistake – there’s nothing like it, not even Frank Sinatra singing Fly Me to the Moon.

Once available only to astronauts and scientists, the weightless experience is about to become a bit more accessible, provided you’ve got the cash. Novespace managing director and ex-astronaut Jean-François Clervoy announced that he plans to offer commercial flights, including one before the end of this year.

Final approval from France’s civil aviation authority is pending, and the price tag – provisionally set at €4,000 – has yet to be finalised.

But Mr Clervoy envisions half-a-dozen sorties a year with 40 passengers each starting in 2012. It would be only the third such commercial service in the world, along with one in the US and one in Russia. So unfasten your seatbelts.

For this flight, which took off from the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget just north of the French capital, passengers were offered a needle in the arm to stave off air sickness. It was a good idea. To understand how a so-called parabolic flight works, think rollercoaster.

Ahead of each half-minute dose of weightless nirvana, the jumbo jet sticks its nose in the air at a 47 degree angle and climbs, climbs, climbs. This is when those on board – mostly slumped against the padded floor and sides of the emptied fuselage – experience “hyper-G”, a sharp intensification of gravity. At it’s maximum, the G-force reaches 1.8, enough to make it feel as if one’s limbs have turned to lead and a 900-pound gorilla is parked on one’s chest.

Try to imagine, then, a gravitational force of 10G, which is what fighter pilots endure during certain death-defying manoeuvres. “Planes are designed to withstand 10G. The human body is not,” said Captain Jean-Claude Bordenave, our pilot for the day and one of only a handful in France licensed to fly a jetliner as if it were a stunt plane.

“Injection!”, says a voice over the loudspeakers as the Airbus hits the top of its arc. Suddenly, the pressure is gone. Indeed, a gentle push with a fingertip is enough to send one hurtling through space, spinning head over heels. Oddly, novices instinctively try to swim – a French deputy attempts a breaststroke.