Headline: Lance Bass to Resume Cosmonaut Training, Won't Fly Until April at Earliest
MOSCOW -- Pop star Lance Bass will resume his training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, but he will not fly to the International Space Station (ISS) this October, a Russian space official said today.
Bass has paid most of his debts to the center and Korolev-based Rocket Space Corporation Energia and will be paying for further training out of his pocket, said an official at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos).
Although Bass has already paid the Gagarin center and Energia "most, if not all" of the costs incurred by his training and other activities, the singer will not train as part of the two-person professional crew due to lift off in a Soyuz taxi to the ISS on Oct. 28, said the official, who asked not to be identified.
"Even if he pays $40 million instead of $20 million he will still not fly," the official said in a telephone interview today. "It is too late."
The official noted that Rosaviakosmos has already sent letters, notifying all of its ISS partners, including NASA, that Bass has been ejected from the Oct. 28 crew.
The official said that his agency is not going to reverse its decision to send cargo instead of a pop star in the three-seat Soyuz capsule. He did not rule out, however, that Rosaviakosmos would agree to let Bass fly with the next ISS crew, which is due to take off in April 2003.
The official, who has been close to the negotiations with Bass and his managers, said he is unaware of either RadioShack or PepsiCo. transferring "any millions of dollars" for Bass' training. Some reports had speculated the companies might be backing the singer's bid. The official said Bass is likely to pay less than $100,000 for completion of his training.
On Monday, Sept. 16, a report from the online version of the Advertising Age trade magazine quoted unnamed sources saying Pepsi was negotiating a $35 million marketing program that might involve a reality TV show in which a winner would get a Soyuz seat.
Pepsi officials in the United States declined comment all week, however. Pepsi's Moscow spokesman Alexander Shalnev also declined to comment when reached Sept. 17.
Bass will resume training as a simple space tourist like dozens of other amateurs that pay the Gagarin center for a theoretical course and a few thrills, such as low-gravity parabolic plane flights, according to the Rosaviakosmos official.
A source close to the Gagarin center confirmed that the center made an official decision today to allow Bass to resume training. The source, who asked not be identified, said the decision was made after the center's foreign trade chief Yuri Bogorodetsky certified that Bass has paid his arrears.
The source said Bass has decided to resume training in part because he has come to like the atmosphere at the center and would like to receive an official certificate of completion.
Gert Weyers, managing director of Amsterdam-based MirCorp, which claims to have assisted the Russian side in negotiations with Bass, refused to comment. The president of MirCorp, Jeffrey Manber, could not be reached. Calls to Alexander Derechin, Energia's foreign marketing manager, went unanswered.
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