Russian space official denies Lance Bass payment deadline

Bass is scheduled to take flight on October 28.

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian space officials denied a news report that 'N Sync member Lance Bass has until August 9 to meet a payment schedule deadline to join an October flight to space.

Sergei Gorbunov of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency said he never told news agencies there was any deadline. The space agency, along with the Energia Company which builds Russian space rockets, did sign a "big contract" with the 23-year-old U.S. pop singer and "we are waiting for payment per this contract," Gorbunov told CNN.

He declined to provide details on this specific contract since the Bass deal is confidential.

Gorbunov explained that, as a rule, such contracts require a 10 to 15 percent down payment at signing, 50 percent midway through the process when they manufacture the cosmonaut's space suit, and a total of 80 percent of the fee before the flight.

Remaining fees are paid after the flight.

Energia's Alexander Derechin refuses to confirm or deny the reported deadline, but said he was "amazed it got into the press".

Bass has been undergoing basic space training at Star City outside Moscow since the beginning of July, Derechin told CNN. Bass is scheduled to start crew training with the Russian commander, Sergei Zaletin, and the Belgian flight engineer, Frank Davina, as early as next week.

The American pop star has been studying the Russian language and, although he is not yet proficient, he should have enough vocabulary for the flight, Derechin said.

"We are doing everything so that he can fly," Derechin said.

The Energia official also said he initially was skeptical about Bass and doubted he would be able to fly, but says he has changed his mind after meeting him.

"He's smart enough, he's an appropriate person and we hope everything will be OK," he adds.

Derechin said that during the one-week flight, scheduled to begin October 28, Bass plans to carry out demonstration experiments geared toward school children, including illustrations of weightlessness and how hearing is affected by weightlessness.

"We hope the flight will go forward in spite of the complications," Derechin says. "Because this is the first time Hollywood meets outer space."

Bass' manager, Cindy Owens, reached in Moscow, told CNN, "We're going forward with this."

Should he fly, Bass would be the youngest person ever to travel in space. He would become the third paying tourist. Millionaires Dennis Tito of California and Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa paid their own way to the space station in April 2001 and 2002, respectively.

Bass would fly to the station on a Russia-made Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.