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- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Why
just send your ashes into space, when you can send them to the moon?
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- Celestis Inc., a Houston-based firm that has sent the
remains of 100 people into earth orbit, said Tuesday it plans to offer
a new service: burial on the lunar surface.
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- The first candidate for this service is Mareta West,
the pioneering geologist who picked the site for the 1969 Apollo 11 moon
landing.
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- She will have her own moon landing of sorts in a year
or two, when about 2 grams of her cremated remains are to be lofted to
the lunar surface, more than two years after her death.
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- She will not be the first earthling to have some of her
ashes sent to the moon -- that was astronomer Gene Shoemaker, whose remains
crashed into the lunar surface last year aboard NASA's Lunar Prospector
spacecraft.
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- But West's ashes would be the first to fly commercial.
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- The company's foundation is paying for West's final trip,
but the service is also available to ordinary souls for a $12,500 fee,
which is "not completely out of line with what people might spend
on a traditional funeral," Celestis president Chan Tysor said in a
telephone interview.
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- West's remains would fly along with a commercial space
mission in the next two or three years, Tysor said. West died in 1998.
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- The notion of lobbing cremated remains into space for
profit is about 15 years old, and so far Celestis has made only three flights
carrying lipstick-sized vials of dead people's ashes into earth orbit.
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- While the company is not profitable at this point, Tysor
said business is good, with interest from Europe and Japan increasing.
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- LOOKING TO EUROPE AND ASIA FOR BUSINESS
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- "The Asian market and the European market I think
hold great promise for us, the cremation rate is very high in Asia, especially
Japan," he said. "We get a tremendous amount of interest from
Germany and a steady stream of interest from the Netherlands, and it looks
like we'll have our first one or two customers from the United Kingdom
soon."
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- There is a protocol to the so-called Earthview flights,
which cost $5,300 each, Tysor said.
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- "The families send in 'cremains' for us to launch
and we hand-carry them out to Vandenberg Air Force Base (in California)
... about 90 days prior to launch," he said.
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- The remains -- a symbolic amount of ashes -- are put
in a lipstick-sized flight capsule made out of high-grade plastic coated
with metal, which is engraved with the deceased's name and a personal message
up to 25 characters.
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- "We've seen 'Ad astra per aspera,' we've seen 'What
a magnificent view,' we've seen 'My spirit is free to soar,"' Tysor
said.
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- Closer to the launch date, the families and friends of
the dead arrive at Vandenberg for a tour and get to know one another before
the launch.
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- The Celestis capsule, carrying as many as 38 vials of
remains, orbits the earth for what could be years, and while it is up,
it can be tracked by the same agencies that track satellites, Tysor said.
Eventually the orbit degrades and the capsule eventually vaporizes as it
re-enters the atmosphere.
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- Marilyn Bohon, a friend of West's family, said she and
others decided to send the geologist's remains to the moon after reading
about the orbital flights.
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- "It just hooked me," Bohon said by telephone
from Oklahoma. She recalled that West's sister was once asked whether Mareta
West would have gone to the moon if she could have. The answer was a resounding
yes, Bohon said.
.
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