spacetoday.net: Russia removes Bass from Soyuz flight

Posted: Tue, Sep 3, 2002, 8:27 AM ET (1227 GMT)
Lance Bass (MirCorp)

The Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos announced Tuesday that pop star and would-be space tourist Lance Bass will not be included in the crew of a Soyuz taxi flight next month. A Rosaviakosmos spokesman said that Bass failed to meet numerous deadlines to pay for the $20 million flight. Rosaviakosmos plans to fly a cargo container in Bass's place on the Soyuz taxi flight to ISS. Bass, who returned to Moscow over the weekend after a week of training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, is packing up to leave, according to Rosaviakosmos. However, officials with MirCorp, the company that brokered Bass's flight, said that the situation was not as dire as Rosaviakosmos reported, telling the AP that a deal should be worked out soon with Bass returning to training as early as Wednesday. The 23-year-old Bass was set to be the third commercial space tourist as well as the youngest space traveler. His flight was to be paid through commercial sponsorships, with his training and flight filmed for a TV series.