back to article Send your loved one's ashes to the Moon for $10k

The US company which last year blasted the remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan on a quick rocket-propelled Earth-orbit jaunt has announced it will be offering an "ashes-to-the-Moon" service as soon as 2009. Prices for Celestis Inc's "Luna Service" start at $9,995 to dispatch a symbolic one gramme of ashes, rising to a cool …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    <no title>

    Bad enough dumping Earth refuse on the moon (have they got a permit?) but then you find it isn't even all of a person's ashes, but a token gramme?!? Gee wiz!

  2. bob_blah
    Happy

    Getting closer

    I want my ashes sent into a black hole so that by the magic of wormholes I will re-materialise on the other side to begin a whole new life in another dimension.

    Either that, or to make sure I use up all my remaining assets so the damn relatives can't fight over them.

    Either is a good outcome.

  3. Lisa
    Happy

    Well...

    It's not something that I'd do to my loved ones. But if I could send my hated ones to the moon... Where do I pay for that?

  4. Pete Randall
    Coat

    Cue littering lawsuits...

    ... from all those clueless individuals who bought an acre on the moon.

    Mine's the airtight one with the domed hat

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    @ bob_blah

    If that's how you feel about your relatives they probably think the sooner you blast yourself into a black hole the better.

  6. Gordon Peffer

    Gives new meaning . . .

    Gives new meaning to Ralph Cramden's "To the moon, Alice, to the Moon, Alice" every time he was annoyed with her. (Jackie Gleason Show 1950s)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Heart

    Whatever happened to...

    ...Lucy Sherriff who used to report on things of a celestial nature? Did I miss her leaving do?

  8. Rob
    Joke

    What I want...

    Is to have my ashes placed inside a fully armed thermonuclear ICBM, which is then fired in anger.

    I've communicated my wishes to the wife, she starts the geopolitics degree next week.

  9. oxo

    Bonkers

    In these green times, shouldn't we ask if this is a worthwhile use of fuel?

  10. Matthew

    There would be a risk of contamination

    If there's bits of dead human lying around on the surface of the Moon and if any kind of bacteria or similar is subsequently found up there on future Luna missions how would we be 100% sure that it was native and not something that had been dumped there by this?

    Also how would you be able to verify that they'd actually put the ashes up there?

    I hope that the people with $10K to spare have something better to spend their money on.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Matthew: risk of contamination

    Did Neil Armstrong et al bring their poo poos back with them or leave them behind?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Matthew

    We're pretty damned sure there's no life on the Moon, nor has there ever been. The US and USSR both returned samples from the surface and we have a large collection of lunar meteorites, which (amongst many other fascinating bits of geochemistry*) have one thing in common - they're completely anhydrous - there is no water on the Moon, either on the surface or in the minerals***, so no water for life. The killer temperatures and solar radiation would also do for organic chemistry.

    And before anyone jumps on the story that bacteria were found on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission to the Ocean of Storms...

    Apollo 12 landed right next to the abandoned Surveyor 3 lander. The two astronauts took samples from Surveyor to see how it had withstood 18 months of radiation, heating, cooling and micrometeorite bombardment. When they were brought back to Earth, spores were found on some of the insulation. These were cultivated and found to belong to Streptococcus. For a long time it was believed that the spores had set when a lab technician assembling Surveyor had sneezed on the instrumentation, and that they had survived their exposure to space.

    HOWEVER, this is now disregarded. The samples were not placed in biological isolation on their journey back from the Moon or on their way to the lab and it is far more likely they were contaminated on the way back to NASA. And experiments on the same species where they are exposed to freeze/thaw/dry cycles like those on the lunar surface always results in dead bugs.

    * if you're a geochemist**

    ** guilty as charged

    *** there *MAY* be some superficial ice at the Lunar South Pole carried by comets, although the evidence is somewhat patchy.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Anonymous Coward

    'Did Neil Armstrong et al bring their poo poos back with them or leave them behind?'

    Worryingly, I know the answer to this one.

    After rendezvousing back in orbit, all the trash and dirty nappies were loaded into the lunar module which was then crashed into the Moon for the benefit of geophysicists* and their seismographs.

    * Children the lot of them.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    @Mike Richards

    > the lunar module which was then crashed into the Moon for the benefit of geophysicists

    Well they would say that wouldn't they? Couldn't have them admitting they weren't bringing it back because no-one could be arsed.

  15. Silentmaster101
    Alert

    Whats this?

    we want to dump shit on the moon so it is cluttered as hell when we get there again?*

    sounds like a wise idea. who decided they had a right to do that?

    *some people would say that the us never got there in the first place.

  16. Hugh McIntyre

    Re: crashing stuff into the moon

    > the lunar module which was then crashed into the Moon for the benefit of geophysicists

    Possibly also because NASA didn't want to have to contend with tracking a bunch of old lunar modules in moon orbit to avoid them possibly crashing into future missions to the moon?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    I'd love....

    ....to send my partners ashes to the moon

    I'd have to kill her first though!

  18. Joel
    Coat

    That has to be...

    one of the stupidest ideas ever.

    Tons of money and a century of hard work culmunates in dumping some dumbass's ashes on the moon.

  19. Peter

    The ecological impact of a few grams

    Just got to this via the post above regarding the production of cocaine.

    I guess you'll need to sell a few keys of one to afford to boost the other!

    With luck it's an early April Fool, but I doubt it.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    eBay

    Re: "Did Neil Armstrong et al bring their poo poos back with them or leave them behind?"

    Imagine what an old, dried turd from the Apollo 11 mission would fetch on eBay?

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