Lance Bass on space & Elon Musk

Lance Bass: I mean ever since I was a kid, you know I wanted to be an astronaut. It was that or be a magician. So I went to space camp, I already started planning what I wanted to be in life, a space engineer, so that would lead me to being an astronaut. Uh, but then things changed for me and I ended up going into music. And then one day I get a call that was a company wanting to put me into space, to be the youngest person to go to space. To really encourage a younger generation to go into math and science.

Larry King: In America, though?

Lance Bass: In America, right. But it would be going with Russia because at that time no one was going to be going on a shuttle. So we went with Russia. And it was incredible. It was, it was something that I can’t even really describe. It was months of training.

Larry King: You went through all the training?

Lance Bass: Oh yeah.

Larry King: So what happened?

Lance Bass: Crazy stuff. Well, a week before launch my mission got scrapped basically over insurance. Because we were doing it, it started out as a CBS show that we were doing, that I was going to host this game show, but then halfway through that got messed up, and it was going to be a documentary for MTV, and no insurance company would cover the production, so it got canceled a week before.

Larry King: You were going to go up with Russian cosmonauts?

Lance Bass: I was going up with some cosmonauts, one was Belgian, one was Russian. I had all my experiments I was doing.

Larry King: Did you learn Russian?

Lance Bass: Uh yeah. I mean, I learned basic Russian. I mean, I mean all my courses were in Russian. All my professors only spoke Russian.

Larry King: Is it still on your bucket list?

Lance Bass: It is. It is. And now…

Larry King: You want to go up?

Lance Bass: I do. And now with this privatized space exploration, it’s uh…

Larry King: Yeah, what do you make of Mr. Musk’s plan?

Lance Bass: I think Elon Musk is a genius. I love what he’s doing.

Larry King: He wants to colonize Mars.

Lance Bass: He’s colonizing Mars, yeah.

Larry King: Would you go?

Lance Bass: I would not go. If you asked me ten years ago I probably would have said yes, but now that I’m married and want to have kids like, I mean that’s a one-way trip. You know, so…

Larry King: It is.

Lance Bass: So I don’t think I would want to do that, although it would be so incredible. Um, but I love what he’s doing. I love the technology he’s creating and giving away. You know, I think he is an amazing leader and we need more people like him.

Larry King: Do you think we’ll have uh, tourist trips to the moon?

Lance Bass: Oh definitely, yeah. And I think so. I think they’ll be building a base on the moon at some point and I definitely see us traveling there as vacations. I hope so.

Larry King: So we’ll open a Stuckey’s.

Lance Bass: Yeah Stuckey’s. A little IHOP.

Larry King: Watch new episodes of ‘Larry King Now’ Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on-demand on Ora TV and Hulu.