Scotty, Where The Hell Are You???

Falcon 1, a privately-funded space rocket, with some, ahem, “interesting” cargo aboard, blew up over South Pacific just 2 minutes after launch from the Marshall Islands late last Saturday (August 2, 2008) local time. The flight, dubbed the “Explorer's Flight” (read on…) carried 3 satellites and the remains, ashes, of 208 people, among them Gordon Cooper (US Mercury astronaut) and actor James Doohan (Scotty of the “Beam Me Up” fame on the original Star Trek TV series.) Apparently a “space burial” company called “Celestis, Inc.”, a subsidiary of another outfit - Space Services Incorporated, does a brisk business putting the remains of your loved ones in outer space (at least that's the plan…) Unfortunately, judging from their after-launch statement, Celestis, Inc. appears also to be full of it: "the Explorer's Flight mission appears not to have reached orbit tonight." Yeah, right, Einsteins!

Apparently neither Gordon Cooper nor “Scotty” can quite make it to the outer space: their remains were already blasted by the same outfit once before, on April 28 2007, on a suborbital flight and later recovered.

The Celestis, Inc. absurdity aside, the Falcon 1 disaster seems to be a norm for the rocket company (Space X) – they have not had a successful launch yet.