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Guy Laliberté, a former Montreal street entertainer who founded the enormously successful Cirque du Soleil, plans to launch into space later this year.

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“I know what I can do on Earth, but what I’m really interested in is learning what their world is,” he said. “Maybe I’ll teach them a couple of tricks of cards, but I don’t know in weightlessness how those things can take place.”

Laliberté, a Canadian worth over $2.5 billion, is paying upward of $35 million to visit the International Space Station as a “spaceflight participant,” or space tourist, in a deal with the Russian space agency.

Laliberté is scheduled for launch September 30 aboard the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and His crewmates will be rookie spacecraft commander Maxim Suraev, a colonel in the Russian air force, and NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams, a veteran making his second long-duration voyage on the station.

Laliberté will spend nine days aboard the lab complex before returning to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 capsule October 11 with outgoing station commander Gennady Padalka and NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt while Williams and Suraev will remain aboard the space station as part of the Expedition 21 crew.

Some professional astronauts have whined in the past that space tourists have no place on the station, but Williams and Suraev both said they welcomed Laliberté.

“So far, my assessment has been very favorable,” Williams said. “I think physically, mentally, emotionally he’s getting himself prepared and he will be prepared for this adventure in his life.”

Said Suraev: “He is really very eager to fly and he is charged with a lot of positive energy. … He’s just a good guy. Since (meeting him) my opinion hasn’t changed. As the flight participant, as a crew member, he’s a very, very good candidate.”

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