Space Burial and meaning in Life, Longevity and ...

the same Houston outfit that rocketed Leary's cremated remains in 1997 in the first commercial space burial is inviting the public to join him in intergalactic immortality. On Saturday, some people took them up on it.

At a busy Long Beach Aspace Fair convention, Carl Grillmaier paid $50 to send he and his wife's DNA - six strands of hair- and a personal message on the next voyage mounted by the firm Encounter 2001

We all grow up wondering what=s out there. Some of us go farther than others, said Grillmaier, 39, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. AI told my wife that long after the Earth is gone, this small spacecraft will be the last little relic of humanity out there.

Jason Klass, a member of the Space Tourism Society, was more ambitious. Along with their samples, he and his girlfriend will send songs from the musical the co-wrote, Planetopia, including one called Queen of Outer Space.

We can't have children , and in a deep philosophical way this may be one way for my genetic makeup to live on, with a minute chance that it might be recovered by another species and we might be re-created,[created demands a creator in the first place doesn't it?] Klass, 43, said. And I could fall in love with my girlfriend all over again on another planet.

So far 4,000 people have signed up, he said. Two who signed up at the convention ordered the $4,800 space funeral service that will send their cremated remains along in an engraved, lipstick-sized aluminum tube, chafer said. This is not space nuts. We're giving people the opportunity to participate directly and personally in an interstellar space mission, chafer said. Of course, commerce is essential to opening any frontier - including the  American Frontier.

Author: Anne-maire O'Conor

Date: Sunday, 26 July 1998

Source: LA Times

Publisher: LA times