Looking back at two would-be space tourists

In this week’s issue of The Space Review I have an article about Lori Garver and Lance Bass, who tried to be orbital space tourists in 2002. Most people in the space industry are familiar with Garver, and her talk at the ISPS last month in New Mexico didn’t have much in the way of new insights about her “AstroMom” bid to go to the ISS. Bass, on the other hand, while attracting all the media attention when his plan came forward (and later collapsed), has talked little about his attempt to fly in space in any detail. The former *NYSNC star does go into some details in his new book, Out of Sync, which I recap in the article, ranging from his surgery to correct an irregular heartbeat to the difficulty he had raising money (including being forced to pay for the rest of his training out of pocket, to the tune of nearly a half-million dollars, to stay on track for his planned fall 2002 launch.) Bass doesn’t say in the book if he has any desire to try to fly in space again, either on a suborbital or orbital flight; Garver, by contrast, says that “I guess I feel like I will still go to space”, although she has no immediate plans for a spaceflight.