Lance Bass: Future Astronaut or Wannabe Astro-Naught?

You’ve got to hand it to Sir Richard Branson. He’s not just a billionaire, he’s fun. He’s not stodgy or creepy or any of that sort. As the leader of the Virgin group of companies, Branson has taken risks time and again to give people something special.

This time, Virgin is about to do something out of this world — literally. He has established Virgin Galactic, a new company dedicated to the exploration of suborbital space flight with an eye toward opening the doors for private flights. The group has done several tests on spacecraft prototypes and the progress being made has been cited as encouraging. It has been projected that “space tourism,” once a buzz word for an industry that never fully materialized, may finally become a reality at last.

What makes this story interesting is that it opens the door for people who may never really cut the grade at NASA to get out there and explore the cosmos. After all, flying into outer space is a dream a lot of us have and no high-profile celebrity has been in pursuit of that dream like former N’SYNC member, Lance Bass.

Bass, like some of the other members of defunct boy band N’SYNC, has been busy leading a largely private life after the singing group disbanded. One of his major endeavors penciled in as early as 2002 was to take part in a documentary of a celebrity going out into space. He was chosen due to his affinity for space travel, as it has been his lifelong dream to fly into space.

What happened next, however, was no less than a dashing of dreams, as sponsors started backing out of the project. Bass had already gone through the paces of preparation, such as moving to Star City, Russia, having corrective heart surgery for his cardiac arrhythmia and learning to speak Russian as part of the job. Yet, for fear of possible accidents and the media backlash that would occur if something went wrong with Bass’s maiden space voyage, the proposed documentary fell through.

To this day, Bass maintains that he would love to try and travel that proverbial final frontier sometime in his life. That was years ago. Now, with Virgin Galactic, the technology may be the key to making Lance Bass’s hopes of space flight real.

Or will it? We asked the Predicto Mobile community and 64% say yes, Bass will visit outer space soon thanks to Virgin Galactic.

What about you? Visit Predicto.com and vote today!

[Via http://blog.predicto.com]

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