
Relatively recently, a new industry was born - a memorial shipment of a part of the ashes of a deceased person outside the Earth. For me it was a great discovery, and I hope my post will be interesting to someone, despite the rather grim theme. The post will be brief, but with a large number of links for self-study. Also, before you begin, I want to remind you of a wonderful
post on the overlapping topic and say thanks again to its author
Sterpa . Like many readers - was very touched.
It all started on April 21, 1997, at an altitude of 11,600 meters above the Canary Islands, when
Celestis , from the
Stargazer aircraft belonging to
Orbital Sciences Corporation , launched the
Pegasus XL rocket into low-Earth orbit, carrying with them capsules with the remains of
24 pioneers and space enthusiasts, outstanding pilots, scientists, people of creativity. Among them, for example, was the father of the original Star Trek series -
Eugene Wesley Roddenberry , as well as the psychologist, writer and guru of the 60s psychedelic revolution,
Timothy Leary . The artificial satellite carrying, among other things, the ashes of these remarkable people of its time remained in orbit until May 20, 2002, when it burned down in the atmosphere over Australia.
After that there were 11 more launches. Of these, perhaps the most remarkable was the sending to the Moon, along with the mission of
Lunar Prospector, the remains of
Eugene Shumaker , the founder of astrogeology, who dreamed of mastering the Solar System, but for reasons of health that did not qualify for the Apollo program.
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The company offers various options for sending ashes - suborbital flights, orbital flights and flight into deep space (in plans for 2014 with the
Sunjammer program). For prices, in order not to debase the post, I give only a
link . From additional options - it is possible to track where in space at the moment there is a spacecraft with remains. A part of the sent apparatus has already managed to burn out, a part is still in orbit. Total sent about 300 capsules with ashes.
The company Celestis recently appeared a competitor -
Elysium Space , founded by NASA engineer -
Thomas Zivaytom , who worked in the Hubble Telescope and Telescope James Webb. The remains are supposed to be sent into orbit together with commercial and scientific satellites for a period from several months to several years (until the apparatus falls into the atmosphere). The first start is scheduled for 2014. It is suggested to follow the satellite through the application for (iPhone / Android). The price is quite
adequate .
In general, everything leads to the fact that space funerals will eventually become quite an ordinary procedure, and, although this is a rather strange business, it may have positive side effects:
- a wonderful way to honor great people, and especially those involved in astronautics (there’s really nothing to argue about here - a good thing);
- promoting the topic of space exploration, collecting part of funds for individual space missions (I agree, the method is non-trivial, but if they want to do a reality show from a flight to Mars, why not make a couple of dozen aluminum capsules with ashes part of the payload of some mission? ?)
- may appear fundamentally different direction. For example - sending "arks", with a preserved biological material containing the genome (or digitized version of the genome) of people who want to pay for it. A sort of space backup.
The plates of “Pioneer” are of course wonderful, but I would like to provide at least a ghostly chance to insure humanity from ridiculous accidents until we fly to the stars.
I would like to hear what opinions / wishes / futurological forecasts the community will express on this topic.