A former fire-eating circus performer promised to leave his matches at home when he blasts
off for the International Space Station this fall as the next space tourist.
Cirque du
Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, a Canadian
billionaire who began his career as a street entertainer, said he does hope
to try a few tricks in space, but fire-eating will not be one of them. He is
paying a reported $35 million for the space tourist trek, which is slated to
launch Sept. 30.
"I would
take out the fire part. I think this is out of the question, by far," said Laliberte,
49, with a smile in a televised NASA briefing Thursday. He's not sure how stiltwalking, another of his talents, would work in weightlessness either.
Open flames
aren't allowed inside the space station, though astronauts have a special box
where they can light
small fires as part of an experiment.
Laliberte
will launch to the space station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with two
professional spaceflyers, a NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut. He is the
seventh person to buy a ticket to visit the space station, but his mission is
the eighth private flight since one space tourist - American
billionaire Charles Simonyi - made the trip twice.
The private
treks to space are arranged under deals between Russia's Federal Space Agency
and the Virginia-based company Space Adventures. Laliberte's trip is expected
to last about 12 days.
But Laliberte
is promising more than a mere orbital joyride. He is dedicating his mission to
increasing awareness about global water issues through the non-profit One Drop
Foundation, which he founded in 2007.
"Water is a
vital resource for a human being and unfortunately it is put in danger," Laliberte
said. "In the near future there is a real problem in front of us in regards of
access to clean water."
That lack
of access to clean water is one of the leading causes of death on the planet,
Laliberte said, making it a pressing issue that he hoped to publicize during
the spaceflight. He plans to announce his full mission plan in August.
The space
station is currently home to a core six-person crew, but its population swelled
to 13 last week when the shuttle Endeavour arrived with its own crew of seven
astronauts. Endeavour is due to depart the station next week and land July
31.
Laliberte
is somewhat of a departure from the space
tourists that that came before him. They made their fortunes in business or
technology, while Laliberte touted his creative side.
"I'm not a
scientist. I'm not a doctor. I'm not an engineer," he said. "I'm an artist. I'm
a creator, and I'll try to do and accomplish this mission with my creative
ability and what life has given me as a tool."
Laliberte
added that while he hopes to increase awareness of water issues, he does expect
to enjoy the experience as well. He'll try some circus tricks and perhaps show
astronauts on the space station some card tricks while savoring the
spaceflight.
There are
probably some tricks about living in space that professional astronauts can
show him as well, he added.
"I think I
will be more like a kid in a candy store out there, discovering things that
those guys know," Laliberte said.
Guy
Laliberte is chronicling his spaceflight and OneDrop Foundation at his Web
site: http://www.onedrop.org/
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