Cirque du Soleil’s Guy Laliberté Journey to Space: A reality we will all soon face
Guy Laliberté is the kind of man who most everyone likes no matter what side of the political aisle they may reside. When someone becomes a billionaire whether or not they want to—they have a major impact on the culture around them—by default. Through his Cirque du Soleil Guy Laliberté has touched many lives, including mine. If not for that Cirque du Soleil in Central Florida particularly at Downtown Disney it is likely that there would have never been the invention of a firewhip—which is something I have become known for with my small jaunts into entertainment. So Guy Laliberté with just a little help from the Canadian government invented a new concept for an animal free circus that has raked the world with creative ambition as one of the most astute entrepreneurs there is. Guy in a relatively short period of time went from a carefree street performer breathing fire into a one of the world’s richest men becoming one of the world’s first space tourists. Guy was able to purchase a ticket in excess of $35 million dollars through a company called Space Adventures who booked him on a Russian rocket destined for the International Space Station.
In many ways all the companies such as the Virgin Galactic endeavor I have been so keen on will be much more affordable opportunities for civilians to move into space. Guy—who is hardly a bastion of conservatism, represents the excessive hunger that the human mind has for a fate destined in space. Too many people, particularly liberals who want to make a religion out of earth worship have attempted to designate the hunger for space as a “dream for the extreme rich.” But what is behind their fearful utterances is the reality that people like Guy Laliberté have opened space to the minds of as many people as Cirque du Soleil has for changing the definition of a circus experience. A ticket aboard Virgin Galactic will only cost $250,000 dollars as opposed to Guy’s experience-which was fairly rigorous. Virgin Galactic’s attempt will be comparatively much more luxurious and inexpensive.
Guy didn’t find just being wealthy fulfilling. He had the world at his feet, yet it wasn’t enough. He had the means to purchase a ticket to space without it draining his bank account, so he did so for the opportunity to scratch at the boundaries of earth. His story carrying him to the deck of his private ship contemplating space travel is a fascinating one that is a tale of hope that should be inspirational to anyone. It wasn’t about being wealthy that made him into such a rich man, it was in pushing himself to new challenges that created it by default—they way it is supposed to work. His wealth is not to be hated—or envied—it is simply the byproduct of a mind at work that happened to change the way everyone sees a circus performance.
Seeking a career in the performing arts, Guy Laliberté toured Europe as a folk musician and busker after quitting college. By the time he returned home to Canada in 1979, he had learned the art of fire-breathing. Although he became “employed” at a hydroelectric power plant in James Bay, his job ended after only three days due to a labour strike. He decided not to look for another job, instead supporting himself on his unemployment insurance. He helped organize a summer fair in Baie-Saint-Paul with the help of a pair of friends named Daniel Gauthier and Gilles Ste-Croix.[6][9]
Gauthier and Ste-Croix were managing a youth hostel for performing artists named Le Balcon Vert at that time. By the summer of 1979, Ste-Croix had been developing the idea of turning the Balcon Vert, and the talented performers who lived there, into an organized performing troupe. As part of a publicity stunt to convince the Quebec government to help fund his production, Ste-Croix walked the 56 miles (90 km) from Baie-Saint-Paul to Quebec City on stilts. The ploy worked, giving the three men the money to create Les Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul. Employing many of the people who would later make up Cirque du Soleil, Les Échassiers toured Quebec during the summer of 1980.[17][18]
Although well received by audiences and critics alike, Les Échassiers was a financial failure. Laliberté spent that winter in Hawaii plying his trade while Ste-Croix stayed in Quebec to set up a nonprofit holding company named “The High-Heeled Club” to mitigate the losses of the previous summer. In 1981, they met with better results. By that fall, Les Échassiers de Baie-Saint-Paul had broken even. The success inspired Laliberté and Ste-Croix to organize a summer fair in their hometown of Baie-Saint-Paul.[17]
This touring festival, called “La Fête Foraine“, first took place in July 1982. La Fête Foraine featured workshops to teach the circus arts to the public, after which those who participated could take part in a performance. Ironically, the festival was barred from its own hosting town after complaints from local citizens.[19] Laliberté managed and produced the fair over the next couple years, nurturing it into a moderate financial success. But it was in 1983 that the government of Quebec gave him a $1.5 million grant to host a production the following year as part of Quebec’s 450th anniversary celebration of the French explorer Jacques Cartier’s discovery of Canada. Laliberté named his creation “Le Grand Tour du Cirque du Soleil“.[6][20]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirque_du_Soleil
The rest was history making Laliberté one of the wealthiest people on the planet. But feeling drained and unchallenged he began to look toward space after learning of a civilian going there in 2001 that had opened his mind to the possibility. So he bought his ticket through Space Adventures and trained with the Russian astronauts for a trip aboard their rocket for a grand adventure into space in 2009. The details of his trip were covered in great detail in the below Forbes magazine where even the smell of space was described.
Once more people in Laliberté’s position, such as Lady Gaga, Steven Spielberg and Labron James go to space and report back their experiences there will be an explosion of interest in the activity which this world has never seen. Space is the next Gold Rush; there are manufacturing opportunities on asteroids and in the zero-G environments that will simply carry mankind to an entirely new evolutionary stage. Politics, philosophy and religion will have to be completely redefined—education totally overhauled just to deal with the psychosis of a species scrambling to space. It will be as unlike anything anybody has ever seen just as Cirque du Soleil is nothing like the old Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus acts—they both take place under a tent or arena, but one is an extreme evolution over the other to the point that they are barely recognizable as being born for the same intent. The jump into space which is going to explode over the next decade with the kind of wave that ushered in the Internet will change completely the way everyone does business.
Those who ride that wave will do well; those who resist it will plunge into a poor state. Virgin Galactic will likely be the first company to bring satellites to the furthest corners of the world giving Internet access to the poorest village of Africa providing those people access to entrepreneurial activity which will give them access to wealth. The wealthy who pay tickets to go into space the way that Guy Laliberté did will fund the fleet of Virgin Galactic ships that will eventually fly people from New York to Tokyo in just a few hours as opposed to an entire day. And soon following will be vacations in space that will make current day Las Vegas look like a roadside tent show. This is all happening over the next couple of decades based on the marginal interest that is generated by each new civilian tourist. Guy Laliberté was one of the first, but soon it will become common.
There is a progressive faction of society that is trying to suppress the ambitions of the movie Interstellar—but to no avail. Interstellar managed to be one of the last films of the year to play in communist China and those people are absolutely devouring the epic Christopher Nolan journey into space. The Chinese and South Koreans have shown massive per screen revenue breaking records playing on 7,742 screens in the world’s second biggest movie market. This will push the Interstellar box office up over $200 million after just a week of full release which is an astounding amount of money. And with each screening comes a deeper hunger to leave earth for space by virtually every individual on earth that will soon be faced with similar decisions as Guy Laliberté had to face—to go, or not to go—that is the question, because reality will present space as a very viable option very, very soon.
Those who ride that wave will do well; those who resist it will plunge into a poor state. Virgin Galactic will likely be the first company to bring satellites to the furthest corners of the world giving Internet access to the poorest village of Africa providing those people access to entrepreneurial activity which will give them access to wealth. The wealthy who pay tickets to go into space the way that Guy Laliberté did will fund the fleet of Virgin Galactic ships that will eventually fly people from New York to Tokyo in just a few hours as opposed to an entire day. And soon following will be vacations in space that will make current day Las Vegas look like a roadside tent show. This is all happening over the next couple of decades based on the marginal interest that is generated by each new civilian tourist. Guy Laliberté was one of the first, but soon it will become common.
There is a progressive faction of society that is trying to suppress the ambitions of the movie Interstellar—but to no avail. Interstellar managed to be one of the last films of the year to play in communist China and those people are absolutely devouring the epic Christopher Nolan journey into space. The Chinese and South Koreans have shown massive per screen revenue breaking records playing on 7,742 screens in the world’s second biggest movie market. This will push the Interstellar box office up over $200 million after just a week of full release which is an astounding amount of money. And with each screening comes a deeper hunger to leave earth for space by virtually every individual on earth that will soon be faced with similar decisions as Guy Laliberté had to face—to go, or not to go—that is the question, because reality will present space as a very viable option very, very soon.
Rich Hoffman
