Expect some professional flips and twists when Guy Laliberte
flies to space this fall.
The Canadian acrobat and founder of Cirque du Soleil
is set to become the seventh
private space explorer when he lifts off Sept. 30 aboard the Russian Soyuz
TMA-16 spacecraft.
Laliberte booked his trip with the Russian Federal Space
Agency through the U.S.
firm Space Adventures, which usually charges about $30 million for the excursions.
Laliberte is set to visit the International
Space Station for about 12 days.
Laliberte is calling his voyage the "first
social/humanitarian mission in space," and says he is devoting his trip to
raising awareness of worldwide water issues. In 2007 he founded the non-profit
One Drop Foundation, which fights for better access to clean water for people
around the world.
"This is a mission that can make a difference and be
true to my personality," he said Thursday at a press conference in Moscow.
"We need to provide access to clean water where it is needed."
To get his point across, Laliberte plans to carry up a poem
he co-wrote with a friend and read it from space. The piece is "a poem to
planet Earth and its inhabitants in regard to the situation with water,"
he said. Laliberte has named his mission the "Poetic Social Mission in
Space."
Laliberte, 50, is married and has five children. He is
currently training in Russia's Star City cosmonaut training center to prepare
for his mission.
"The Russian Federal Space Agency really puts you
through some tough tests," he said. "My main concern is to make sure
that I am ready and I will not have to be babysat by my crew."
Travelling into space represents a childhood dream,
Laliberte said, and he thinks the expense is absolutely worth it for the
experience he will have and the impact he can make.
"I think this is one of the best investments anybody
will have done to promote the awareness of water," he said.
"Everything I will get out of that experience, I will bite in it like in a
juicy apple."
The last space tourist to fly was Charles Simonyi, a
Hungarian software executive who made his second paid trip to the space station
in March, also through Space Adventures. Laliberte will be making the eighth
space tourist flight.
Laliberte could be the last
private citizen to travel to space for a while. If NASA retires its space
shuttle fleet in 2010 as planned, the Russian vehicles will be the only way to
transport people to the International Space Station. In that case, available
Soyuz seats could become scarce for space tourists.
Laliberte will be making the eighth space tourist flight (he
is the seventh private spaceflyer, since Simonyi flew twice). He, like all the
other private spaceflyers so far, opted not to participate in a spacewalk,
which would have cost an extra $15 million.
Laliberte is part of Space Adventures' elite Orbital
Missions Explorers Circle program, which requires a $5 million deposit to join,
and allows members to skip to the head of the waiting list when space tourist
opportunities become available.
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