Stardust memories: Space, the final frontier in funerals

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2007

PARIS (AFP) — Pioneering and poetic -- or borderline macabre, according to your view -- burials in space seem set for a rosy future.

Since the cremated remains of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the TV sci-fi series Star Trek, rocketed into the cosmos a decade ago, the ashes of more than 300 other deceased have followed suit.

They include Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto, US astronaut Gordon Cooper, "Star Trek" actor James Doohan and comet-spotter Eugene Shoemaker, whose ashes were buried on the Moon.

But celebrities of the space age are not the only ones whose last journey has taken them to the final frontier rather than the local cemetery.

Of more than 300 "celestial burials" that have taken place since 1997, most concern...