A first, pioneering effort at cosplay in space has been halted by a shocking development: Space tourist Daisuke Enomoto has failed his physical:
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 September 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.
Unmentioned in the CNN report was Enomoto’s bold plan to dress as Char Aznable from GUNDAM during takeoff.
The thin, reedy geek had trained hard for his 10-day space trip;:
Flying to space is not as simples as writing a fat check. The Japanese entrepreneur has also already gone through intense training at Russia’s cosmonaut school outside Moscow for the last few months.
He can now swim 800 meters in 22 minutes, four minutes shorter than when he started his training months ago. He has been put in a capsule in the Black Sea to train to remove his equipment quickly in case of a water landing.
“I’m kind of a nerd. I don’t exercise,” he said. But now, Enomoto said, “I’m getting in good shape.”
Evidently not good enough. Enomoto is not the first space tourist to fail his first physical — if he gets his physical conditioning up he could still take off at a later date. The dreams of cosplayers everywhere go with him.
