posted 09-25-2008 08:04 PM               

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 $21 million by the U.S. firm that arranged the venture.

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.

Enomoto filed suit last month in the U.S. 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 $10 million Ansari X Prize awarded in 2004 for the first privately developed manned space flight.

In a response filed on Wednesday, Space Adventures' lawyers said Enomoto's contract did not entitle him to a refund if he became medically disqualified.

The complaint (.pdf), filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, tells a tale seeped in eye-popping sums of money, and allegations of the rich eating the rich in a bid to reach space, the final frontier.

Enomoto claims that Space Adventures repeatedly pestered the former Livedoor executive to invest, and that the company took his money without ever having permission by the Russians or the 15 other members of the International Space Station to participate in a space walk -- what the lawsuit calls "extra-vehicular activities" or EVA.

The lawsuit charges that Space Adventures informed him that the Russian Federal Space Agency "approved Mr. Enomoto's EVA participation." But the space walk will cost an "extra" $10 million.

In response to the complaint, Space Adventures said in a court filing Wednesday that, "Even if Enomoto could prove his unlikely claim that he was somehow misled, he suffered absolutely no damage from any misstatement because, as the complaint admits, the cause of his failure to fly was medical disqualification, not lack of authority."

posted 09-26-2008 11:02 AM               

But that's besides the point: granted, I used to work for Space Adventures, but in that regard I know that one of the first things spelled out is that the Russians retain the right to disqualify any candidate for medical reasons up to the point of flight. That's a risk every paying and non-paying Soyuz crew member takes. Think of it as the Ken Mattingly Apollo 13 clause.

So unless Dice-K can prove that his disqualifying medical condition was not present at the time he flew, then he probably does not have case.