Is Space Burial the Funeral Practice of the 21st Century?

Credit: http://www.nasa.gov/

The last seconds till take-off feel faster. It’s as if they’re accelerating, pounding, relentless—no, that’s your heartbeat pushing against time, trying to speed it towards the moment that you have imagined for months, maybe years. It’s a dream come true. You have traveled with friend and family all the way to Cape Canaveral to watch a “symbolic portion” of your loved one journey into outer space. A portion? Yes, your loved one was cremated years ago. This is a space burial.

Credit: Wikipedia

And it is anything but science fiction. Though companies such as Elysium Space and Celestis offer a variety of these “celestial services”, the basic idea is simple: to send a gram or so of your loved one into space. As the dazzling pathos of these technologically driven funeral companies points out, we are born from the stars; it is to the stars we shall return.

Elysium Space will mail you a kit with which to store the “symbolic portion” into a bullet-sized capsule, which they load into the rocket. The capsule even includes an inscription of passenger’s initials as well as an 80-character memorial saying for those words you never wanted to forget—so why not write them on the night sky? You are then invited to (and given a video of) the launch, after which you can download an app to track the rocket’s course. The spacecraft stays in orbit anywhere from a few months to a few years, then eventually flares up in the atmosphere—becoming a final, glorious shooting star.

Credit: hubblesite.org

If this celestial service does not quite appeal to you, Celestis offers a number of options. In the least involved, the symbolic portion shoots up until it reaches zero gravity, then returns to earth; you even get the capsule back. Or else the loved one’s remains can be scattered on the moon in the “Lunar Service”. But for the explorer committed to other galaxies, in a “Voyager Service” the remains are sent on a permanent journey into deep space, “to boldly go where no man has gone before,”—though not quite yet. The first journey is not expected until January 2015. Even so, Celestis boasts a list of successful launches dating back to 1997. Check out some of the testimonials.

If heaven is above us, beyond the stars, at the edge of the universe, then one sees the appeal of a celestial service. Who wouldn’t want to cast that dear, aluminum parcel as far as possible toward the divinity always receding behind the unknown reaches of space, to the black holes and the starlight too far for us to see? Does technological prowess allow us to claim with the firmament a kinship hitherto conceived only in theory or myth, concept or metaphor? This is the 21st century. Are we stardust at last?

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