A company will send the ashes of more than 150 people including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and actor James Doohan who played “Scotty” on the TV series and movies on the first launch of the new United Launch Alliance rocket Vulcan Centaur when it takes off from Cape Canaveral later this year.
Celestis Inc., which has named the mission the Enterprise Flight in deference to Roddenberry, has been in business since 1997, once sending the ashes of planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker onto the moon aboard the NASA Lunar Prospector. In 2019 the company sent cremated remains or DNA of 152 people up on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch that deployed a small satellite set to orbit the Earth for 25 years.
Some of the ashes of Roddenberry, who died in 1991, will be joined by his late wife, who died in 2008.
“We’re very pleased to be fulfilling, with this mission, a promise I made to Majel Barrett Roddenberry in 1997 that one day we would fly her and husband ‘Star Trek’ creator Gene Roddenberry together on a deep space memorial spaceflight,” said Celestis cofounder and CEO Charles M. Chafer, who announced it would be the company’s 20th memorial spaceflight. “We look forward to launching this historic mission on a rocket named Vulcan.”
Many of the original TV show actors have passed away including Doohan in 2005. Some of Doohan’s ashes have flown on previous spaceflights including being smuggled aboard the International Space Station years ago by space tourist Richard Garriott who visited the station in 2008 flying up on a Russian Soyuz.
The ULA Vulcan Centaur has been in the works since 2014, slated to succeed the company’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets. This mission will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41.
“We are honored that Celestis has selected ULA to launch this important mission,” said ULA president and CEO Tory Bruno. “What a fitting tribute to the Roddenberry family and the ‘Star Trek’ fans to be a part of the maiden flight of Vulcan, our next-generation rocket.”
The company has been flying parts to be incorporated in the new rocket on existing Atlas V launches, but still awaits delivery and certification of the new BE-4 engines being designed by Blue Origin. Bruno has maintained, though, that ULA still aims for its first Vulcan launch to be in summer 2022, although that could slip.
The Celestis ashes won’t be the only payload. The primary mission will be to send company Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander on a trajectory to the moon. The Centaur upper stage will then continue to deep space to achieve an orbit around the sun, which is the selling point for Celesits.
The cost for what it calls Voyager Service for deep space is $12,500 per participant. That’s the same price for Luna Service for remains to head to the moon. The more common flight for the company is its Earth Rise Service for $2,495, in which either ashes can get sent into zero G space and return to Earth. For Earth Orbit such as the Falcon Heavy mission in 2019, the cost is $4,995 a person.
The Vulcan Centaur flight will be the first deep space mission for Celestis.
“Upon completion of its powered burn and coast phase, the Enterprise Flight will become Enterprise Station – the most distant permanent human repository outpost, and a pathfinder for the continuing human exploration of space,” reads a statement about the flight on Celestis.com.
Among the ashes of others on the flight include Philip Chapman, who was a mission scientist on Apollo 14 and was tapped to fly into space on a canceled Skylab mission. Also flying are the ashes of David C. Webb, who once taught space policy at the University of Central Florida and was one of the 15 members alongside Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride on President Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Space formed in 1985.
“ULA has a deep history with launching critical missions in support of national defense for our nation, so we are deeply humbled that many veterans also will be flying on this mission,” said Bruno. “It is an amazing recognition of their service and sacrifice to our country from their loved ones.”
