You might not make it to heaven in the afterlife, but you sure can go as far as the moon. Celestial funerals are now a possibility, thanks to San Francisco startup, Elysium Space. For a ginormous fee of about $12,000, the company will privately transport your cremated remains to the moon! Scoop has more:
Founded by former NASA engineer Thomas Civeit, Elysium boasts of bringing space and funeral experts together to provide the unique service. “Families now have the historic opportunity to commemorate their departed loved ones every night through the everlasting splendour and soft illumination of the Earth’s closest companion: the moon,” they stated in a press release.
Although the company was founded in 2013, the service only offered in August of this year, after Elysium managed to seal a deal with space logistics company Astrobotic Technology. They’re currently taking orders, and the first batch of ashes will travel to the moon on Griffin Lander spacecraft – Astrobotic’s inaugural lunar mission – in 2017.
According to Civeit, the families who are opting for the service usually have a special connection with space or the night sky. In fact, that’s how the idea for the service came about. Elysium’s initial plan was to run a service called Shooting Star Memorial, in which ashes are briefly sent into orbit and return to Earth as a bright streak across the atmosphere. But then they were approached with an unusual request by US Army infantry soldier Steven Jenks.
Jenks, who lost his mother to lung cancer, wanted to send her remains to the moon because it was a special symbol of their relationship. She would always write to him: “No matter how lonely you feel and how far you are, always look to the Moon and know I am with you. I love you to the Moon and back, Love, Mom.” So when he learned that Astrobotic was set up to send various payloads to the Moon, he asked if they could take his mother’s ashes too.
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