Be honest: how many times have you said, I wish someone would just blast that Sarah Brightman into space?
If you have, then you're in luck, because someone is about to.
It'll be a blast ... Sarah Brightman will be the first professional singer to perform in space.Credit: Lefteris Pitarakis
Brightman, best known as the former wife and muse of Andrew Lloyd Webber and star of musicals such as Phantom of the Opera and Cats, is heading into orbit.
The 54-year-old soprano will fly to the International Space Station on September 1 where she plans to become the first professional singer to perform in space.
Brightman will be part of a three-person team on the mission, and has spent the past two years undergoing periodic testing to assess her suitability for a space mission.
Although it has never been explicitly stated, it is believed she paid $US50 million for the ticket.
Space "tourism" is a fairly new idea, and fewer than a dozen people have travelled to space on what amounts to a paid ticket.
They include multimillionaires Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Anousheh Ansari and Cirque de Soleil owner Guy Laliberte.
The price tag for those tickets was between US$20 million and US$40 million.
Brightman's six-hour flight and 10-day orbit will begin at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakhstan desert.
She will be travelling in a Soyuz space rocket.
Brightman has not announced what she will sing once she is in orbit, however she told UK media she has been consulting with her ex-husband on the project.
"We are taking it slowly at the moment," she said. "It's finding a song which suits the idea of space and something that is incredibly simple."
Singing in micro-gravity, she said, was "very, very different" to giving an earthly performance.