It looks like a space tourist flight is back on for this fall. It's being reported that MTV will sponsor Lance Bass.

One potential hitch, though. The flight is only three months away, and the protocols agreed to last year stipulated six months of training. Personally, I don't see the requirement myself, but it will be interesting to see how this issue is resolved.

If it's just a one way trip, can't they cut the training in half?

I personally would like to see it end on the launch pad, nothing worse than sending the crappiest of American pop culture to space, regardless of how much publicity it would draw.
Irks me to no end.....

Hey, the Russians are going to continue to SET the rules, and then BREAK the rules whenever it suits their purposes, as long as NASA lets them get away with it. The agreement currently states 6 months training is needed, but out of all that, only ONE WEEK of training at NASA in Houston is required, and if the Russians claim their customer is ready to fly no matter how much (or little) Russian systems training he/she has had, NASA isn't going to have the stomach to try to fight it (as if they'd succeed anyway!). To me it's in the Russians' best economic interests to cut the "required" training time to the bone; if they can get multiple potential customers engaged in a bidding war right up until the last possible minute, they should be able to reap more money. On the other hand, the Russians would also like to be able to reduce the training time in case they cannot line-up a hard client by L-6 months. It all comes down to what I said to begin - the Russians will do whatever they want, regardless of whether they agreed to something else with NASA on a scrap of paper! Great partnership deal NASA made for itself...

Send him with less training! Send him with less training! Oh please... oh pleeeease!!!

How many in the band? Four, isn't it? So how about they give each "boy" one and a half months of training, and send them all at once? On a nonrecoverable orbiter, I mean?

Hmmm... reminds me of the final credits of the second Bill and Ted movies, when Wyld Stalyonz were sent to Mars. But they came back.

When they get through with whatever "boy band" this specimen belongs to, I hope they offer free one-way tickets to all the other "boy bands" infesting the pop charts. We need fewer "boy bands" and more girl bands, especially scantily-clad girl bands. Yeah!

Regardless of personnel opinions of boybands (and I can't stand them either), I think Lance's flight would be great for attracting kids attention to the space programme, and showing how anyone can go, not just 'right stuff' supermen. And if they cut the training period even better, as lets face it, it can't be that hard to learn to crap in 0g?
Finally, the more toursits go up the stronger the arguments for developing mass space tourism become, which may persuade someone to invest in start-ups

Lance bass is the worst person to send into space.nasa is dropping the ball.the russian made the right call, No bucks,No buckrogers!In space no one can hear you sing. Its amazing how generous they are to give him $20 million to go out in space but how about the other $20 million to get him back? well, if he goes up, one down and four to go. oh the pain, oh the pain of it all...gee, goerge jetson didn't have this problem...