Cirque de Soleil Founder to Visit Space

The 49-year-old Laliberte will leave Earth aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft on September 30, 2009, and then spend 12 days on the ISS, where he will be joining Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk.

In preparation for the journey, Laliberte has already commenced training with cosmonauts at Star City, near Moscow.

Thirsk will be travelling via Space Adventures, a company that arranges trips to the ISS. Six other tourists have already taken advantages of Space Adventures' services. These are:

• Anousheh Ansari - Iranian-American businesswoman
• Richard Garriott - American video game developer
• Gregory Olsen - American scientist and businessman and former NASA astronaut
• Mark Shuttleworth - South African businessman
• Charles Simonyi - American computer software executive. Simonyi who has already made two trips
• Dennis Tito - American businessman and former NASA employee

Sales of seats on the Soyuz help subsidize the Russian Space Agency's space program.

Space Adventures has been operating for eleven years

Other companies also have plans to send tourists into space. Over 250 people have paid $200,000 apiece for a flight with Virgin Galactic, a new space tourism company owned by Richard Branson. About 30 people have paid all or part of the $95,000 fee for a trip via XCOR aerospace.

Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft, Robert Bigelow, founder of Budget Suites hotels and companies SpaceX and Space Exploration Technologies also have plans for the space tourism trade.