- MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's
space agency has scrapped plans by 'N Sync singer Lance Bass to join an
October space mission after the American pop star failed to meet payment
deadlines, a spokesman for the agency said on Tuesday.
-
- Bass, 23, would have become the youngest-ever person
in space. He has been told to leave the Star City cosmonaut training center
outside Moscow, where he was preparing to join a mission to the International
Space Station.
-
- "After failing to fulfil the conditions of his contract,
Lance Bass has been told that his training at the Cosmonaut Training Center
has ended and that his flight to the ISS is impossible," spokesman
Sergei Gorbunov told Reuters.
-
- Bass, backed by a consortium of companies rounded up
by a Hollywood producer, had already missed initial deadlines to come up
with the agreed fee, reported to be up to $20 million.
-
- "We are preparing to send a cargo container to the
ISS instead of a third crew member," Gorbunov said. "Bass is
now at Star City, gathering his stuff and preparing to leave."
-
- Bass would have been the third space enthusiast to pay
his way into space after U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito and South African
entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, who blasted off from Russia's space base
in Kazakhstan.
-
- Mir Corp, the company brokering Lance Bass's flight,
said the star still hoped to solve the dispute with the Russian space agency
and secure a seat aboard the Soyuz space taxi.
-
- "Discussions are still continuing between Celebrity
Mission, the company supporting Lance Bass, and our Russian colleagues.
We had a meeting today and will continue to meet tomorrow," Gert Weyers,
a spokesman for Mir Corp, said from Amsterdam.
-
- "I believe that we can be very confident that we
will reach a solution at short notice, allowing the program to continue.
Lance Bass is still extremely committed."
-
- U.S. space authorities had expressed worries that Bass
was ill-prepared for the flight and could disturb work at the station.
Bass began preparing for the October Soyuz flight in the spring, allowing
himself training time just short of the six months demanded by the ISS
protocol.
-
- But cash-strapped Russia said it needed the multi-million
dollar payment to service its fleet of Soyuz craft. The fee for a single
tourist is enough to cover the entire cost of launching a manned craft.
-
- The October Soyuz mission will now go ahead with only
Russian commander Sergei Zalyotin and Belgian flight engineer Frank DeWinne,
as no other cosmonaut can be prepared in the short time ahead of blast
off.
-
- Bass is not the first pop star to nurture space dreams,
after Russian pop group Na-Na bid to become the first pop group to give
a concert from orbit last year. Na-Na also underwent training, but never
made it into space.
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