Former circus performer Guy Laliberte, the founder of Cirque du Soleil, expects to have some fun when he launches to space this week, but also has serious side to his self-proclaimed “poetic social mission.”
Laliberte, a 50-year-old former acrobat and the first Canadian space tourist, is headed for the International Space Station and has dedicated his flight to publicizing global water issues through a creative performance to be broadcast from orbit.
“We’re doing a multimedia event – the first one from space to Earth – including artists from all over the world talking about the situation of water,” Laliberte said.
Though some air-borne acrobatics are certainly a possibility, Laliberte said that fire-eating, at least, will be off limits to him during his spaceflight. He also plans to wear his trademark red clown nose, and perhaps share some with his crewmates on the station.
“This [nose] is a symbol of my mission, but it is also what reminds me that I should never forget that once I was a kid,” Laliberte said. “I’m not a professional cosmonaut, an astronaut, so what I’m bringing up there is what I am. And what I am is an artist, a creative.”
Laliberte is chronicling his spaceflight via the One Drop Foundation Web site: Onedrop.org
SOURCE: SPACE.com
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