Encyclopedia
Space burial is a
burial procedure in which a small sample of the
cremated ashes of the deceased are placed in a capsule the size of a tube of
lipstick and are launched into space using a
rocket.
As of 2004, samples of about 150 people have been "buried" in space.
Technical and economical aspects
The effort and cost of launching an object into space is very high. Furthermore, the cost is directly related to the payload, i.e. the mass of the object. Therefore various measures are taken to reduce the mass of the burial, which usually include:
- The corpse is cremated, reducing the mass of the remains to about 5% of the initial mass .
- Only a small sample of the ashes is included, typically only 1 g or 7 g. The remainder of the ashes can be buried conventionally in the earth or in the sea
...
.
Other measures to reduce cost include:
- No rockets are specifically launched for this purpose; the samples of the remains are just part of the payload.
- Multiple remains are buried with the same rocket, although usually the remains are in separate capsules.
The capsules are kept together in a flight container, e.g. attached to the upper stage engine of the rocket, to avoid additional "
space debris".
The second factor greatly influencing the cost includes the target location of the payload. Most burials do not actually leave the
gravitational field of the earth but only achieve an orbit around earth. The capsules containing the samples of the remains circle the earth, until the upper layers of the
Earth's atmosphere have slowed down the capsules, and they
reenter the atmosphere. The capsules burn up upon reentry similar to a shooting star, and the ashes are scattered in the atmosphere. The time between launch and reentry depends on the orbit of the satellite, and can vary widely. The first burial reentered after only 5 years, but other burials are not expected to reenter in less than 250 years.
There are a number of alternative options if a reentry into the earth atmosphere is not desired. All of them are more complex and expensive than a burial in earth orbit. If an object leaves the gravitational field of the earth, it enters the gravitational field of another body in space. The closest object near the earth for that purpose is the
moon. Although the moon is technically also in the gravitational field of the earth, it will not hit the earth within any human timeframe. A service is available for space burial on the moon.
As of 2005, the only person buried this way is Dr.
Eugene Shoemaker, , best known for co-discovering the
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
If the moon is still too close, it is possible to launch the remains into
outer space, although this is the most costly space burial currently available. In January 2006, the cremated remains of
Clyde Tombaugh were sent on the
New Horizons, which will go beyond
Pluto .
History
The practice of space burials is a very recent practice due to the technical difficulties involved in launching an object into space. The very first space burial
Earthview 01: The Founders Flight was launched on April 21, 1997. An aircraft carried a modified
Pegasus rocket containing samples of the remains of 24 people to an altitude of 11 km above the
Canary Islands. The rocket then carried the remains on an elliptical orbit with an
apogee of 578 km and a
perigee of 551 km , rotating around earth once every 96 minutes until reentry on May 20, 2002, northeast of
Australia. Famous people buried on this flight were
Gene Roddenberry and
Timothy Leary.
The second space burial was the burial of a sample of the remains of Dr.
Eugene Shoemaker on the moon by the
Lunar Prospector probe, launched on January 7 1998 by a three-stage
Athena rocket. The probe containing scientific instruments and the ashes of Dr. Shoemaker impacted the moon near the lunar south pole on 4:52 a.m. Central Daylight Time, July 31, 1999.
The list of space burials to date:
...
as secondary payload on a three-stage
Athena rocket to the moon
- February 10, 1998: 30 remains samples as a secondary payload launched into earth orbit on a Taurus missile
- December 20, 1999: 36 remains samples as a secondary payload launched into earth orbit on a Taurus missile
- September 21, 2001: 43 remains samples as a secondary payload launched into earth orbit on a Taurus missile
Outlook
Currently, only one company,
Space Services Inc., offers space burials. Space Services took over the assets of Celestis, Inc., which launched four flights from 1997 to 2001. As science progresses it is expected that the cost and difficulties of space burials will be reduced, and other companies may enter the market.
As of 2006, only cremated remains have been buried.
Full body burial
To date, the notion of sending an intact human corpse into outer space for burial is simply too expensive and complex to be of any practical use. If humans colonize space, though, it may become possible or even commonplace.
Religious aspects
At least one service for burial in space was planned. As part of the contingency plans for the
Apollo 11 mission, if the astronauts were unable to return from the lunar landing, a funeral service would be held for them on earth, similar to the service for
burial at sea, with references to the ocean omitted and replaced with "the deepest of the deep."
It should be noted, though, that most religions do not provide special instructions for space burial due to the procedure being only a recent development, and only around 150 people have been buried in space so far. As only a small portion of the remains are buried, a regular funeral and burial ceremony can be performed according to the beliefs of the deceased, and only a small part of the remains are diverted into space. Due to the infrequency of the flights, the sample of the remains have to be stored until the next launch. Also, not all religions allow the bodies of deceased to be cremated, as is often done in space burial.
Famous people buried in space
Launched to Earth orbit on April 21, 1997
Buried on the moon on July 31, 1999
...
, , Astronomer and co-discoverer of
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.
Launched to Earth orbit on December 20, 1999
- Charles Oren Bennett , space illustrator
Launched in outer Space on January 19, 2006
- Clyde Tombaugh , American astronomer and discoverer of the former planet Pluto in 1930.
Planned to launch to Earth orbit December 6, 2006
This will be the second
Falcon 1 flight, now delayed due to a launch failure.
...
and
movie series
Star TrekFictional characters buried in space
In
science fiction, dead characters are sometimes buried in space, by analogy to the naval tradition of
burial at sea.
- Hawk Hawkins, in the movie Space Cowboys, died on the moon. Hawkins, after personally making sure an out-of-control nuclear satellite was steered out of Earth's way, managed to land on the Moon and, sitting against a boulder, gazed at the Earth until his air ran out.
- Robert A. Heinlein's 1940 short story "Requiem" describes how the industrialist Delos D. Harriman who funded the first flight to the Moon but was never allowed to fly there himself finally gets there as an old man, dying after landing. He is buried there with Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" for the epitaph.
- Captain Spock, from Star Trek, was buried in a photon torpedo and fired onto the rapidly forming Genesis planet, which initiated his rebirth
- Captain Future, the hero of the Edmond Hamilton stories with the same name, received a space burial. However, later it was revealed that Captain Future is still alive, and a Doppelgänger has been buried instead.
- Ovaron, a character of the Perry Rhodan is the world's most prolific literary science fiction [i] series, published since 1961 [i]...
series, is buried in space in Volume 722: "A Message for Ovaron". - Breckcrown Hayes, a character of the Perry Rhodan is the world's most prolific literary science fiction [i] series, published since 1961 [i]...
series, is buried in space in Volume 1048: "Atlan's Return". - Frank Poole in , is killed during extra-vehicular activity and dragged off to space by an uncontrolled capsule, so he isn't actually buried; he is revived after his drifting body is found in . However David Bowman buries in space several other crewmembers whom HAL 2001 killed during revival from hibernation.
- A space burial for Philip J. Fry, delivery boy, appears in Futurama is an American [i] animated television series [i] that follows Philip J. Fry [i] ...
episode "The Sting", but only in another character's extended dream sequence. - Philip J. Fry, the first person on Mars in the Futurama is an American [i] animated television series [i] that follows Philip J. Fry [i] ...
episode "The Luck of the Fryrish". He is named after his uncle, listed above. However, his burial was in a conventional graveyard in a space station named Orbiting Meadows National Cemetery. - Lieutenant John Kelly, a minor character on . He was the commander of the ill-fated Ares 4 mission to Mars. Lieutenant Kelly disappeared on October 19, 2032, captured by a graviton ellipse and died on board his spacecraft on October 25th. Kelly's body was retrieved by the crew of the USS Voyager and buried in space circa stardate 53301.2 in 2376.
- Numerous other Star Trek characters have also been buried in space.
- Christopher "Maverick" Blair, in the original Wing Commander, is given a space burial if killed during a mission.
- Kane, from the movie Alien is buried in space, being the first human killed by the creature.
- In Babylon 5 is an epic science fiction television series [i] created, pr ...
, multiple characters are given space burials by having their caskets sent into a star. The ritual always ends with the quote, "From the stars we came, and to the stars we return, from now until the end of time. We therefore commit this body to the deep." - S.R. Hadden, owner of Hadden Industries, is buried in space after dying of cancer on Mir
...
in the film
Contact. This is different from
the book the movie is adapted from, where Hadden is not terminally ill and voluntarily chooses to leave earth in a space-bound "casket" while still alive. The "casket" is actually a small spacecraft capable of leaving Earth orbit for deep space, although the lack of any kind of superluminal propulsion means Hadden will undergo cryogenic hibernation to allow him to survive the thousands of years needed to cover interstellar distances.
- The entire crew of Red Dwarf is a British [i] science fiction [i] sitcom [i] that ran for eight series, ...
, following the radiation disaster except for David Lister . The first burial shown on the show was George McIntyre. - The multiple hero Ace Rimmer's remains form a ring of coffins and deactivated hologram transmitters around a planet in the 'Red Dwarf universe.
- Dizzy Flores, a character from Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, is buried in space with full military honors after dying from a bug attack.
- A military space funeral parlor is depicted in Enemy Mine in which human remains from Human-Drac wars are routinely and irreverently disposed of.
- In , the Spartans that did not survive the genetic enhancement procedures are launched into space.
- Captain Paolo Cassius, the original White Base captain in Mobile Suit Gundam
- A very realistic space burial scene is depicted in the 1955 film Conquest of Space after a crewmember is killed by a meteor fragment.
Space disasters
The
list of space disasters shows that 4
cosmonauts and 14
astronauts have perished in flight
as of 2006.
Thus no remains of these victims are or have been in space.
Animal remains in space
A number of animals have died in space; see
Animals in space. Not clear is whether there are still animal remains in space. Though there have been requests, no pets have yet been buried in space.
External links
- , Wired Magazine 21. February 2006
