A joint Russia-US crew blasted off from Earth today, bound for orbit and the International Space Station.
The cigar-shaped Soyuz rocket climbed into a blue morning sky from the barren steppe of Central Asia, arcing higher and higher until only a ball of flame could be seen.
"It was wonderful. It was magnificent. It was beautiful," Michael Griffin, the head of US space agency NASA, told Reuters at the Baikonur space centre in Kazakhstan.
On board the Russian spacecraft were US Commander William McArthur, Russian Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev, and American entrepreneur and scientist Gregory Olsen, who is due to spend about a week in orbit. The crew face a daunting 6-month stint.
Olsen, rich enough to afford a reported $20 million ticket, will spend his time in space conducting experiments. He then hitches a ride back to Earth with the outgoing US-Russian crew.
"He's doing much more in space than simply looking out of the window," said Eric Anderson, chief executive of Space Adventures, the company which arranged the trip.
The Soyuz is scheduled to dock with the station in two days.
Russia currently bears the responsibility for ferrying people and supplies to the $100-billion station after NASA grounded its shuttle fleet in July, having failed to fix a technical problem that killed seven astronauts in 2003.