The search team has so far come empty

May 14, 2007 19:31 GMT  ·  By
Actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery Scott in the original 1966-1969 Star Trek series.
   Actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery Scott in the original 1966-1969 Star Trek series.

Two weeks ago, on April 29, the ashes of the actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery Scott in the original 1966-1969 Star Trek series, have been sent to the edge of space by a Houston-based company.

The rocket, belonging to Space Services Inc., which organized the "memorial spaceflight," descended with the help of a parachute, but is thought to have landed into rough terrain, which has made the search team come up empty so far.

"The terrain is very mountainous; it's not somewhere that you can walk or drive to. My understanding is that it will take some time to get up into there," said spokeswoman Susan Schonfeld.

Nature hasn't made it easier for the team, either. Due to "horrendous" weather in the desert state, the Up Aerospace Spaceloft XL craft is yet to be located and recovered, along with the ashes of the actor.

Doohan died two years ago at the age of 85 and in the first Star Trek series inspired the legendary catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" - even though it was never actually uttered on the show.

The company is confident they will track down the remains of the rocket: "They know the general location, and we have the utmost confidence that they will recover it."

He is not the first personality to have his ashes flown into space, as Space Services Inc. charges $495 to send a portion of a person's ashes into suborbital space. In 1997, the creator of the Star Trek universe had his ashes blasted into space by the same company.

As of 2004, samples of about 150 people have been "buried" in space, in the sense that their ashes, which account for less than 5% of the original body mass, were sent into space. To date, the notion of sending an intact human corpse into outer space for burial is simply too expensive and complex to be of any current practical use.