Do you want to make sure that your burial is special? There are companies that deliver people’s ashes to the moon. One business, Elysium...
Do you want to make sure that your burial is special? There are companies that deliver people’s ashes to the moon. One business, Elysium Space, is based in San Francisco and another, Celestis, is located in Houston. The services are not cheap – Celestis’ moon burial options start at $12,500 and Elysium Space costs $11,950.
Awe-Inspiring Memorials
“From the first day we started Elysium Space and imagined awe-inspiring memorials, we thought that the moon could create the quintessential commemoration,” Elysium Space founder and CEO Thomas Civeit, a former NASA engineer, said. “Offering this exceptional tribute within the reach of most families is an important part of this new chapter opening for our civilization.”In addition to the moon, you can also launch your ashes into deep space or the Earth’s orbit as a shooting star.
Keeping Our Loved Ones With Us
Instead of looking down at a grave when you want to remember your departed loved ones, you can now gaze up at the sky, reminiscence, and know that they are with you. If you choose the moon option, its surface becomes a majestic memorial. Or you can choose to continue on as a celestial journey by choosing the shooting star option.
Elysium is also adding a Milky Way option – you can send your remains to Deep Space and leave the solar system to travel the universe. Celestis has four options: earth rise, earth orbit, luna, and voyager.
Adding Humanity To Space
In addition to honoring loved ones, the companies seek to add some humanity to the final frontier. Through this environmentally noninvasive commercial development, they make sure the cremated remains are not scattered and do not contribute to space debris.
The venture is meant to support the vision of a future for humanity in space. Neither companies have their own rockets; both get the ashes aboard rockets already scheduled to launch, as secondary payloads. So far, Celestis has flown a total of 13 space burial missions since 1997.
On that first flight, an Orbital Pegasus rocket blasted into orbit a capsule containing the remains of 24 different people, including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, writer and psychologist Timothy Leary and physicist and space-exploration activist Gerard O’Neill. The capsule re-entered Earth’s atmosphere in May 2002.
