Lance Bass, a super star of the boy band cult, is slated to be the next space tourist when he rides the third-seat of a Russian trip to the space station in October. While the Russians are required to give six-month's notice to their international partners of such tourists (and failed to do so in this case), the other nations have no choice but to let Lance fly as they all know that the Russians desperately need money to keep their promised schedule of launches. NASA has given four companies small contracts to study ways to use commercial boosters and automatic docking to send supplies to the Space Station. The only alternatives at this time are the shuttle (expensive, and its flights are needed for other tasks) and Russian cargo rockets (likely to be rescheduled whenever the Russians run out of money, which is often).--Stephen V Cole