MOSCOW - British singer Sarah Brightman may be the next paying passenger to ride a Russian rocket to the International Space Station, the Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified official in the space industry in Russia.
If it happens, Brightman, 52, would make the journey in 2015
and would be the first paying customer since Cirque du Soleil
founder Guy Laliberte who donned a red clown’s nose during his
2009 trip, the official was cited as saying.
Russia has sent seven private passengers to the
International Space Station, each of them reportedly paying at
least $20 million. American investment manager Dennis Tito was
the first to make the journey in 2001.
But seats on the three-person Soyuz capsules have become
scarce since U.S. space agency NASA retired its space shuttles
last year, leaving Russian rockets as the only craft capable of
carrying crews to the station for now.
Brightman – who rose to fame starring in the original London
and New York casts of “The Phantom of the Opera” – visited Russia about a month ago and received the approval of a medical
commission to begin training at the Cosmonaut Training Centre
outside Moscow, the source added.
Brightman’s agent was not immediately available for comment,
and officials at Space Adventures, a U.S.-based firm that has
organised paid trips in the past, were not immediately available
for comment either.
The singer was married to composer Andrew Lloyd Webber in
the 1980s and pursued a chart-topping solo career after their
divorce, bringing classical music to a broader audience and
selling millions of records along the way.
Interfax cited an unnamed source in the Russian space
industry saying plans to send a two-person crew to the station
for about a year in 2015, instead of the usual six months, would
free up a seat for a paying passenger on that trip or others
around that time.
Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Wednesday it
supported the idea of gradually extending expeditions to the
station to a year, but said that no decision had yet been taken.
