Blast Me Up, Scotty
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:06 am
What is it with Texans and the urge to fire weird stuff into the sky? I grew up here, yet I don’t get the fascination. For instance, it wasn’t immediately clear to me why someone would want to launch a massive banana into the thermosphere, but hey, you know, it’s art, I guess.
But this? A Houston company wants to send the cremated remains of actor James Doohan, “Scotty” from Star Trek, into space as part of a commercial space flight. According to a press release, Scotty will be joined by Astronaut L. Gordon Cooper and 200 other, uh, regular dead folk (along with some unmanned scientific research). Now, granted, what you do after you’re dead is your own business. But it’s still disturbing to see this in your inbox on a Friday afternoon:
LAS CRUCES, NM — Celestis Inc., a subsidiary of Space Services Inc. (Houston, Texas), announced today that the countdown has begun for the next Celestis Memorial Spaceflight — The Legacy Flight… The Legacy Flight will bring those dreams of spaceflight into reality as the capsules containing the cremated remains of more then 200 participants from countries around the world are launched into space, in this inaugural Earth Rise Service.
I guess those are participants in the least active sense of the word. Later in the release the company’s CEO added, “Space remains the domain of the few, the dream of many. With Celestis, the dream of spaceflight and the desire to take part in the opening of the space frontier can be realized — and is available to everyone,” although he neglected to add “who’s dead.”
