You Want To Be Buried on the Moon?
LOS ANGELES, May 09, 2000 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Call it another giant leap
for mankind.
Celestis Inc., which launched cremated bits of ``Star Trek'' creator Gene
Roddenberry and LSD guru Timothy Leary into the heavens more than three years
ago, is now taking reservations to bury the dearly departed on the moon as early
as next year.
A commercial rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base or Cape Canaveral
will include a payload of lipstick-size capsules containing cremated remains of
about 200 people.
The four-day, 240,000-mile flight to the moon and then collision with its
surface will run $12,500.
``We are trying to open the space frontier for everyone,'' Celestis co-founder
Charlie Chafer said from company headquarters in Houston. ``The funeral industry
is changing dramatically, from e-commerce to new and unique methods of
memorialization. The baby boomers want to do things a little differently.''
Lunar geologist Mareta N. West, who helped pick the Sea of Tranquility landing
site for Apollo 11 in 1969, has the first confirmed reservation on a flight late
next year or early 2002. She died in 1998 at 83.
Chafer is in discussions with two companies planning moon missions to share
space in their capsules. The transportation itself will be provided on rockets
launched by Orbital Sciences Corp., one of the world's leading commercial space
companies. NASA isn't involved.
Each capsule contains about 7 ounces of ash, a fraction of the 5 to 7 pounds an
average cremated body weighs. They are inscribed with the name of the deceased
and an epitaph.
There is precedent for such a mission. The cremated remains of Dr. Eugene
Shoemaker, co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy comet, were stashed in a capsule,
put aboard NASA's Lunar Prospector two years ago and sent to the moon.
The Navajo tribe got an apology from NASA after complaining about the Shoemaker
lunar burial. Traditional members of the country's largest tribe, which has
about 250,000 members, regard the moon as sacred.
``It's unfortunate that people have to come up with schemes any way they can
just to make money,'' Navajo spokesman Ray Baldwin Louis said from Window Rock,
Ariz.
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On the Net:
celestis.com
orbital.com
By JEFF WILSON
*** end of story ***
Streets full of people
All alone
Roads full of houses
Never home
Church full of singing
Out of tune
Everyone's gone to the moon
Eyes full of sorrow
Never wet
Hands full of money
All in debt
Sun coming out in
The middle of June
Everyone's gone to the moon
Long time ago
Life has begun
Everyone went to the sun
Hearts full of motors
Painted green
Mouths full of chocolate
Covered cream
Arms that can only
Lift a spoon
Everyone's gone to the moon
Everyone's gone to the moon
Everyone's gone to the moon |
