Anousheh Ansari is a wealthy business woman who funded her own trip to the International Space Station for a ten day adventure in September 2006. The Persian, who lives in Dallas, reportedly paid $20 million for the opportunity.
Ansari left one very disgruntled Japanese businessman in her wake when she blasted off into space. It seems Daisuke Enomoto, 37, had completed training in Russia and planned to fly to the station aboard the Russian Soyuz capsule but was pulled from the three member crew a month before liftoff because he was ruled medically unfit due to kidney stones.
Enomoto had plunked down $21 million to Space Adventures in order to make the trip and participate in a spacewalk. He says he had passed multiple medical exams by panels of medical personnel, one such screening only days before they grounded him. The issue of the kidney stones had been discussed at length and had not been a concern previously.
He believes that he was displaced to make room for Ansari, his training backup, and the kicker is that Space Adventures will not refund his money. The contract that he initially signed specified that if a medical condition cropped up, a trainee would be out of the program and not eligible for a refund.
Enomoto has filed a suit in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virgina against the company that took his money and promised him a space flight. The company plans to send it’s sixth paying customer into space next month. A representative for Space Adventures said:
“That was a risk he undertook. Even if Enomoto could prove his unlikely claim that he was somehow misled, he suffered absolutely no damage from any misstatement because…the cause of his failure to fly was medical disqualification, not lack of authority.”
Enomoto contends that Space Adventures, pressured by Ansari, persuaded the Russian’s to disqualify him under the pretense of a medical condition. Said Enomoto’s lawyer, “Mr. Enomoto’s ‘medical condition’ was no worse than it was just two weeks prior to his disqualification, when he was medically cleared by the Russian Government Medical Commission.”
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Source – Reuters