Guy LaLiberte (Cirque du Soleil founder) is from outerspace!
Actually, he’s just GOING to outer space– as part of a tourist moon mission.
Read the article here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_sc/us_space_shuttle
And here’s a little excerpt for you:
Circus performer’s flight preview steals NASA show
By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer– Thu Jul 23,2009 4:42 pm ET
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A former stiltwalker and fire-eater stole NASA’s show Thursday, saying he’ll be “like a kid in a candy store” experimenting with zero-gravity tricks on his upcoming tourist trip to the international space station.
Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte is shelling out a reported $35 million for his round-trip ticket aboard a Russian spacecraft. He will rocket into orbit from Kazakhstan at the end of September with a professional astronaut and cosmonaut, and spend more than a week at the space station.
At a news conference in Houston, as 13 people circled overhead on the shuttle-station complex, Laliberte was bombarded with questions from journalists, most of them gathered in his home country of Canada.
“As you know, I’m not a scientist. I’m not a doctor. I’m not an engineer. I’m an artist. I’m a creator, and I’ll try to do and accomplish this mission with my creativity and what life has given me as a tool,” said the Quebec billionaire, who turns 50 in September.
Laliberte assured reporters that he will not play with any fire in space — for obvious reasons. But he hopes to try some acrobatics in weightlessness and may teach his crewmates a card trick or two.
“I don’t know how we’ll be using stilts up there,” he said. “But I think there are a couple little things, hopefully, that I have learned in my career of street entertainer that I will try to apply up there.”