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Grounded space tourist wants US$21 million refund

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-26 11:28

CAPE CANAVERAL – A Japanese businessman who trained for a 10-day flight aboard the International Space Station has sued to get his money back, claiming he was defrauded of US$21 million by the US firm that arranged the venture.

Space tourist Daisuke Enomoto of Japan, who is due to take off from the Baikonur cosmodrome this September, tries on his space suit at an undisclosed factory outside Moscow July 5, 2006.

Daisuke Enomoto, 37, had completed training in Russia and planned to fly to the station aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule in September 2006. But he was pulled from the three-member crew a month before liftoff, opening a seat for Dallas businesswoman Anousheh Ansari to fly instead.

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Enomoto filed suit last month in the US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, against Virginia-based Space Adventures, the space tourism company that plans to send its sixth paying passenger to orbit next month.

In the lawsuit, which was posted on the Internet by Wired magazine, Enomoto says the medical condition cited for his removal from the crew -- kidney stones -- was well known by Space Adventures and the doctors who had monitored his health and suitability for space flight throughout the training.

Enomoto alleges he was pulled from the flight so Ansari, who had invested in Space Adventures, could fly instead. Ansari also was the primary backer of the $US10 million Ansari X Prize awarded in 2004 for the first privately developed manned space flight.