Circus tycoon, 2 crew board orbiting space station
KOROLYOV, Russia — A Canadian circus billionaire boarded the International Space Station on Friday and promptly played the entertainer, donning a clown nose after a smooth trip up from Earth.
Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte became the seventh paying space tourist to travel to the station, where he plans to mix clownish fun with a serious message about the growing shortage of clean water on the planet 220 miles (355 kilometers) below.
Laliberte, dubbed the first clown in space, boarded the station with American astronaut Jeffrey Williams and Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev after the Soyuz craft that carried them up docked with the orbital outpost and laboratory.
“I’m adapting pretty good. I love that thing,” Laliberte said in a video linkup with relieved relatives and space officials watching on a big screen at Russian Mission Control outside Moscow.
He chatted with his children in French — “Allo, Papou,” one said — and put on a red clown nose, stealing the show as he crowded in with the space station’s eight other occupants in zero gravity.
At Mission Control, Laliberte’s five children and partner Claudia Barilla broke into applause when the Soyuz TMA-16 docked with the space station.
“We were happy he didn’t get space sick,” Barilla told The Associated Press after the video linkup, cuddling their 2-year-old daughter.
An experienced acrobat, fire-eater and stilt-walker, Laliberte also had put on a clown nose before Wednesday’s launch, and brought several to the station for crew mates to try on. He also warned he would tickle them while they sleep.
But he has a serious mission as well. He planned to read a poem dedicated to water conservation in a satellite linkup to be shown in 14 cities from Oct. 9. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, pop singer Peter Gabriel and Irish rock group U2 also will participate.
Quebec-born Laliberte, 50, a former street performer who is worth an estimated $2.5 billion, returns to Earth on Oct. 11 with two of the station’s current crew members aboard one of three Soyuz crafts now docked at the station.
Third-time space traveler Williams, 51, and first-timer Surayev, 37, plan to stay in orbit for 169 days.
“We are really proud of him,” said Surayev’s wife, Anna, who watched the docking along with their two daughters. “Glad his dream came true, because it took him 12 years to achieve it.”
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