November 6, 2005 Hong Kong resident and Japanese entrepreneur Daisuke Enomoto (Dice-K) will be the next private space explorer candidate, following in the footsteps of the world's first private explorers, Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth and Greg Olsen. All four will have used the services of Space Adventures to organize their spaceflights to the International Space Station with Dice-K’s expedition planned for October 2006. Dice-K has already begun cosmonaut training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia.
Dice-K, founder of DICE-K.com commented, “I am proud to be the first private citizen from Japan to begin training for an orbital spaceflight. I hope that by my interest in space exploration many others will be encouraged to learn more about the mysteries of the black sky. For the past 30 years, I have dreamt of seeing our Mother Earth from space.”
“We are excited to announce that Dice-K will be the next private space explorer to visit the International Space Station,” said Eric Anderson, president and CEO, Space Adventures. “It will be another proud moment at his launch, not only for Space Adventures, but for Japan as a country. We encourage people from all around the world to explore the final frontier. We congratulate Dice-K and wish him well in his training.”
Dice-K is a 34 year-old, Japanese national that has been living and working in the Pacific Rim (USA, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan) for the last 15 years. He was the Executive Vice President, Chief Strategic Officer and member of the Board of Livedoor, a publicly traded TSE (Tokyo Stock Exchange) company in the IT industry.
During his tenure with Livedoor, the company experienced exponential growth with the market capitalization growing from US$150 million, when Dice-K joined, to approximately US$1.5 billion. The current market capitalization of Livedoor is approximately US$5 billion. Currently, he is an independent investor providing investment and strategic business advisory services for select companies such as mobile content company Net Village.