Daisuke Enomoto

Daisuke Enomoto (榎本大輔 Enomoto Daisuke, born April 22, 1971, nicknamed Dice-K) is a Japanese businessman and former livedoor executive who hoped to become the fourth space tourist. He had trained at Star City, Moscow in Russia to fly with two members of Expedition 14 on board Soyuz TMA-9, which was launched on September 18, 2006.

However, on 21 August, 2006, a Russian Federal Space Agency spokesman announced that Enomoto was "deemed not ready to fly for exclusively medical reasons", although he hinted that Enomoto might recover and join a later mission. His replacement on this particular flight was Iranian-American businesswoman Anousheh Ansari. Enomoto is currently involved in a lawsuit against Virginia-based Space Adventures in which he hopes to reclaim the $21 million dollars he paid the company over a 2 year span.

Enomoto would have been the first self-funded space tourist from Japan and Asia (journalist Toyohiro Akiyama flew on Soyuz TM-11 in 1990, and could be regarded as the first space business traveller). Enomoto's flight would have taken him to the International Space Station (ISS) after lifting off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the world's oldest spaceport.

Enomoto made international news when it was revealed that he intended to go into space wearing a costume of Char Aznable, a character from the anime series Gundam.

References

External links

• Spacefacts biography of Daisuke Enomoto
• Biography of Daisuke Enomoto on his own web site
• Space Adventures Announces Next Private Space Explorer
• Medical defeats 4th space tourist
• The Space Tourist Who Wasn't