Surgeons attempt zero gravity surgery

Have you ever seen a cyst fly?

A team of French doctors planned to slice a cyst off a man's arm Wednesday in the world's first zero-gravity surgery, operating aboard an airplane soaring and diving in and out of weightlessness.

The experiment is part of a broader effort to develop robots for surgeries from a distance, in space or on Earth, the doctors said. The surgeons will be strapped to the walls of the Airbus 300 Zero-G for the three-hour operation.

The plane was scheduled to take off Wednesday midmorning from the Institute for Aeronautic Maintenance in Merignac, adjacent to Bordeaux in southwest France. It was to make 30 roller coaster-like maneuvers, called parabolas, during the flight.

The operation, announced Monday by chief surgeon Dominique Martin and the French National Center for Space Studies, is part of a project backed by the European Space Agency that aims to develop earth-guided surgical space robots.

Note to self: Do not release scalpel -- lest puncture wound repair need to be added to cyst removal.