Jill Dougherty: Russians, singer out of sync

CNN's Jill Dougherty

MOSCOW (CNN) -- Russian officials said Tuesday that 'N Sync singer Lance Bass hasn't made payments and therefore won't take off for a trip next month to the international space station, but representatives of the pop star say they are trying to salvage the deal.

CNN Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty filed the following report Tuesday:

DOUGHERTY: It's been back and forth, a big tug of war between the organizers of Lance Bass and the Russian Space Agency. But finally the Russian Space Agency is saying that's it no more -- he's not going to fly.

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... We spoke to a member of the Russian Space Agency Press Service, and he said the organizers for Lance Bass simply couldn't come up with the money, that they didn't pay a dime. And so he says on October 28, when that flight is going to go up to the international space station, there will be a Russian and a Belgian aboard, but Lance Bass won't be on it.

And he said, in fact, that they're planning on sending probably some type of cargo container in place of Lance Bass.

Now, we contacted Lance Bass' people and talked to Jeffrey Manber, who is with MirCorp. And he said, "No, it's not over. We have another proposal. In fact, I'm out the door ready to go to a new meeting."

He says there is this new proposal, and that Celebrity Missions, which is the organization that's pushing this for Lance Bass, is ready and prepared to go ahead. He also said Lance Bass trained [Monday] at [Russia's] Star City. He did not train [Tuesday], he said, but that his stuff is still out at Star City.

So we don't know. We've been through this a lot, as I said, back and forth. But at this time it doesn't sound good for Lance Bass becoming the youngest person to ever fly into space.

As for reports about a possible television show about the Bass trip, one of the problems is these contracts are pretty complicated, and it's money, but it's also the production.

You know, there was a Hollywood producer who was interested in producing this. And so it gets very, very complicated. And doing contracts here in Russia is very complicated. Both sides weren't talking about exactly what the sticking point is.

Unless some miracle happens, and they can pull something off at this meeting, it looks like it's not going to happen.