HOW TO LEAVE THE PLANET WHEN YOU’RE DEAD

There are those in life who are happy to wait for their ship to come in. There are those who have the drive to swim out and meet their ship. And those who have the vision and resources not to wait for either, but rather build the ship themselves. But if you miss the boat altogether, it’s worth remembering that leaving the planet is a lot cheaper and more straightforward when you’re dead. Your expansive and fragile 75 kg body will be a lot more compact and resilient, and will weigh only a couple of kilograms when it’s reduced to ash. And as any rocket engineer will tell you, when it comes to payloads, weight and size are everything.

There are several companies who have spotted this niche and are now in the business of returning you back to the immeasurable heavens from whence you came – companies with tasteful names like Ascending Memories, Elysium Space, Ascension and Celestis, who offer to send your ashes into space with something for every budget. Suborbital? Orbital? Moon? Deep space? The wallet’s the limit. Starting at a couple of thousand dollars, you (or a least a spoonful of ‘you’) can live forever among the stars. The view of the universe might not be as transformative, but like death, the experience will last forever – or at least until your spacecraft’s orbit decays and you return to earth re-cremated as a shooting star. Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, 1960s counterculture icon Timothy Leary and a host of other dead notables are all satisfied customers of this celestial burial at space. It took a couple of attempts for Star Trek actor James Doohan to make the trip – some of his ashes were launched on a SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket in 2008 that failed to make it into orbit, but he finally made it aboard a Falcon 9 in 2012, beaming up in the company of Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper. The planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker went one step further – his remains were sent crashing into the moon on board the Lunar Prospector to mingle with the moondust. If you want to go for your own memento mori moonshot, try to make sure your death coincides with a launch to avoid disappointment. Right now Celestis are offering to send a portion of your remains to the moon for $12,500 on board its ‘Luna 02’, the Lunar XPRIZE Moon Express spacecraft. Launch date: to be confirmed. It might be worth planning ahead.

Frustratingly, our restless sphere has made it hard for those with aspiring minds to physically stray too far. Hard, but not impossible. Whether you’re dead or alive, when it comes to leaving the planet, history has taught us that timing is crucial: what’s needed is a moment of synchronicity where the right technology, the right politics, the right price and the right planets all align. Whether you run a national space agency, or you’re a jobbing astronaut, or a ten-year-old girl staring back in time through the bedroom window at the night sky, being in the right place at the right time is everything. Where does that leave you?

Our time down here is fleeting. There are no guarantees of anything. But if you’re persistent, if you use your time creatively, and if you’re dealt a lucky hand along the way, the stubborn window might creak open to let you through. Although the golden rule, as any space traveller caught without their spacesuit will tell you, is don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, you can at least keep the window clean and enjoy the view. Allow yourself to feel the tug of the strings and the sound of the beating wings of the Gansa pulling you higher and faster. With every journey, the real fun is in the planning – the anticipation of the grand adventure to come. And every grand adventure is launched by asking the most important question of all – Well, shall we go? To which the answer must be, of course, Yes, let’s go.