Billionaire circus "clown" blasts off for space station (Roundup)

Sep 30, 2009, 13:57 GMT

   Baikonur/Moscow - A Russian Soyuz rocket carrying the billionaire chief of the Canadian Cirque du Soleil company lifted off on Wednesday, headed for the International Space Station, Russian state TV reported.

   Guy Laliberte, 50, who paid some 35 million dollars for his 12-day space journey, wore a clown's red nose as he prepared for the launch from the Baikonur facility in Kazakhstan.

Charles Bolden, head of the US space agency NASA, watched the takeoff from Kazakhstan. He said the mood in the Soyuz capsule was relaxed after liftoff.

   The Canadian space tourist, along with Russian astronaut Maxim Surayev and NASA crewmember Jeffrey Williams, is due to arrive at the space station on October 2. The two astronauts are set to stay on the station until March 2010, while Laliberte will be in space for 12 days.

   Laliberte started his circus career as, amongst other roles, a stilt-walker, and went on to create the innovative circus troupe in the 1980s.

He is the seventh space tourist, according to the Russian space agency, Roskosmos.

'He won't be the last one, but we'll probably take a break until 2011,' said Roskosmos head Anatoly Perminov, as cited by the state news agency Ria Novosty, since space on the capsule is needed for scientific experiments.

US millionaire Charles Simonyi was the last space tourist, visiting the space station in March.

It is Surayev's first space trip, but Williams' third. The two will work on 48 different scientific experiments on the space station. On October 12, Belgian Frank de Winne will take over as the first European chief of the space station.

On the sidelines of the launch, Russian space experts took time to grieve the death of Pavel Popovich, who died Wednesday, five days short of his eightieth birthday, reported the Tass news agency. Popovich flew into space in 1962, the fourth man ever to do so.