TV bosses in orbit over 'celebs in space'

A boy band singer, a Hollywood leading man and a blockbuster movie director are queuing up for the ultimate in reality television. They have put their names down for a journey into space, to be broadcast live around the globe.

Details emerged last week with the announcement that the Russian space company MirCorp expects to sign up Lance Bass, 23, the singer in the US pop band *NSync, as the first celebrity cosmonaut to live on board Space Station Alpha – the international space station.

The deal, which will cost Mr Bass's backers about $25m (£18m), has television promoters, corporations and marketing experts in a frenzy. His heavily sponsored mission will be recorded for a TV special, Celebrity Mission: Lance Bass. According to Mr Bass's Los Angeles-based promoter, David Creek, other globally known stars are keen to follow the lead first set by the millionaire businessmen Denis Tito last April.

They include James Cameron, the multi-millionaire director of Titanic, and an unnamed supermodel. Even Tom Cruise has expressed interest in travelling into space.

"It's electric, this concept. It attracts attention faster than any other," said Mr Creek, the president of Destiny Productions. It will be the latest global television phenomenon, he said, the ultimate in reality TV. "It seems that the way to go here is celebrities in space."

The chance to win space flights is also being touted as the next game show sensation. In Denmark, the game show Big Mission gets 42 per cent ratings as contestants compete for a cash prize and a seat on the first commercial sub-orbital space flights due to begin within the next few years. A Singapore-based businessman is also reportedly planning a global lottery game with a space flight as a prize. Several wealthy British-based tourists have already paid $100,000 to book seats on these sub-orbital flights, including Madsen Pirie, the head of the Adam Smith Institute think tank, and an unnamed Middle Eastern businessman based in London.

Despite his fame and corporate backing, Mr Bass faces competition for his seat from a Polish businessman, Leszek Czarnecki, 39, who is already booked on the medical testing programme for prospective cosmonauts near Moscow. Mr Czarnecki has yet to sign a contract to fly on the ISS, however, giving Mr Bass's backers the edge. They have a more lucrative proposition for Rosviacosmos, the Russian space agency, and MirCorp, the privatised space company.

Mr Creek has ambitious plans to stage a series of "stars in space" shows. "I have four other huge celebrities and I would say two are very, very serious about this. I have a supermodel who called me directly. They're just wild about the whole thing," he said.

If his contract is agreed, Mr Bass has to pass two weeks of stringent physical and mental health testing at the Institute of Medical and Physical Problems in Moscow before he can start a tough six-month training programme.

Under the deal planned by Mr Creek, every step will be filmed, from his underwater weightlessness simulations to emergency landing practice. The viewers will also watch Mr Bass taking the ultimate test: several flights on the cutely named "Vomit Comet", an Ilyushin jet which takes trainee cosmonauts on a three-minute sub-orbital space flight to test their response to true weightlessness. The show could even feature product placements, and ads shot by Mr Bass in space. The principle was established by Radio Shack, the US chain of electrical stores, which had ads filmed on the space station last year. Mr Creek believes this project could spin off into a rolling series of TV specials. "My hope is that we will buy multiple flights for all the celebrities," he said.

The concept left science-fiction novelist J G Ballard "breathless with admiration". Manned space flight has been struggling to recapture the popular and political imagination ever since the Challenger disaster in 1986, he said.

"This is the marriage of two of the greatest chimeras of our age: space flight and celebrity," he said. "Celebrity is the key to everything. Unless a celebrity is involved, we're not interested. This may well bring the space age alive again."