Saturday’s failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 1 launch vehicle did more than destroy three small satellites. It also sent the ashes of Mercury astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper Jr., Star Trek actor James “Scotty” Doohan and 206 other people into the Pacific Ocean instead of orbit.
The remains were placed aboard the rocket through a Texas-based company called Celestis. A spokeswoman, Susan Schonfeld, told The New York Times that the company would re-fly the remains of all 208 people using backup samples.
This launch marked the second effort to send Doohan’s and Cooper’s ashes into space; last year, they were launched aboard an UP Aerospace suborbital rocket in New Mexico. The payload containing the ashes was lost for about three weeks in the rugged mountains before being recovered in good shape.
One of Doohan’s seven children, Ehrich Blackhound, said he has had enough. He wrote an eloquent piece on Boing Boing saying that each launch opens an unhealed wound.
“While there are many complicated reasons why this is a disappointment, mine is simple: I’d like to finish saying goodbye.
“Every launch attempt is like reliving his funeral. There’s a lot of pomp and ceremony, and a retelling of his deeds in life. But at the end of these funerals, something goes awry, the body doesn’t get buried, and you know you’re going to have to come back to do it over again.
“I’m not laying blame on anyone for the delays. It’s difficult, living on the cusp of technology. Where most of us lament the premature obsolescence of our cell phones, there are those few of us who’ve pinned the memories of our family members on a rocket, hoping it will touch the sky.”
Reliving a loss is never easy, but forgetting someone special is weak. At its best, this botch-up is another example of decades-old underachievement in space, and a disrespect to Scotty’s fighting spirit.