US space-funeral company plans to launch lunar cemetery
AFP (via SpaceDaily.com)
A US funeral business that specializes in launching cremated human remains into Earth’s orbit has begun taking reservations for landing small capsules of ashes on the moon, announced the company’s founder.
“Celestis’ first general public lunar mission could occur as early as 2010 and reservations are now being taken,” said Charles M. Chafer, Celestis founder and president, in an email to AFP. “We can send up to 5000 individual capsules to the lunar surface.”
For transportation, Celestis has made deals with two other US private space companies, Odyssey Moon and Astrobotic Technology, which are currently working on making commercial flights to the moon.
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.
Continue reading ‘Falcon 1 Crash Sent Gordo’s and Scotty’s Ashes into the Pacific’
Celestis will launch the ashes of 208 people into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket in June. The flight, which will be launched out of the Marshall Islands, will be the seventh and largest memorial flight undertaken by the Houston-based company. There is more information at the Space Frontier Foundation website.
SpaceX, based in El Segundo, Calif., is hoping that the third time is a charm for their low-cost rocket. Two previous Falcon 1 launch attempts have failed; the first exploded shortly after takeoff, while the second reached space but failed to put its payload into orbit.
Grieving family members and relatives will be able to send their loved ones’ ashes into lunar orbit or even to the surface under an agreement between Celestis and Odyssey Moon.
The agreement provides Houston-based Celestis with payload space aboard Odyssey Moon’s planned lunar landers and orbiters. Ashes will be contained in small individual canisters in a payload module.
Odyssey Moon, based in the Isle of Man, was founded last year. The company is competing in the Google Lunar X Prize to land a rover on the moon, but it also plans to launch of series of lunar landers and orbiters.
“The thrill and joy Celestis provides touched me personally when my dear friend and International Space University co-founder Todd Hawley reached his dream of spaceflight in 1997,” said Dr. Robert Richards, CEO of Odyssey Moon. “We welcome the opportunity to support Celestis and continue their uniquely compelling service to the Moon.”
Hawley’s ashes were aboard Celestis’ first flight. The company also assisted NASA in placing the ashes of Dr. Eugene Shoemaker aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. Controllers intentionally crashed the orbiter at the lunar south pole when its mission ended on July 31, 1999.
