MOSCOW – A Japanese businessman seeking to become the world's fourth space tourist has failed a medical test and cannot fly to the international space station next month, a Russian space agency official said Monday.
Daisuke "Dice-K" Enomoto, 34, was to be launched in a Russian Soyuz vehicle from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the next space station crew on Sept. 14. However, Roscosmos spokesman Igor Panarin told The Associated Press that Enomoto "was deemed not ready to fly for exclusively medical reasons."
Another person will be chosen to fly with U.S. commander Miguel Lopez-Alegria and Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin, Panarin said.
Enomoto was to have spent a total of 10 days in traveling to and from and being on the space station before returning to Earth with the station's current occupants, Russian commander Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. flight engineer Jeff Williams.
Previous "space flight participants" to the space station were Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth and Greg Olsen, whose trips brokered by Virginia-based Space Adventures Ltd. were estimated to cost $20 million each.
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