LUNAR MEMORIALS
Want to send your remains into space? For just $11,950, you can send a “symbolic portion” of the remains of you or someone close to the moon with Elysium Space. The first 50 “funeral in space” customers even get a discount for $2,000.
This is what the San Francisco-based company calls “Lunar Memorials”: bringing a meaningful portion of the remains of a loved one to the surface of the moon, “helping to create the quintessential commemoration” as the company’s website puts it.
The memorial became possible after Elysium Space contracted Astrobotic Technology, a “lunar logistics” firm based in Pittsburgh that sends payloads to the Moon. Astrobotic’s Griffin lander gives Elysium the technological capability to send the remains to the Lunar surface.
LOOKING DOWN FROM THE MOON
In a press release by the companies, the touching tale of Steven Jenks, an American infantry soldier sending remains of his mother to space is told. Prior to her passsing from Stage IV Lung Cancer, Jenks’ mother wrote letters to her son stationed in Iraq, signing them “No matter how lonely you feel and how far you are, always look at the Moon and know I am with you. I love you to the Moon and back. Love, Mom.”
In a statement, the soldier said “I will know that she is looking down on my family and maybe they won’t feel so alone.”
While as AOL pointed out, the company isn’t the first to send a person’s remains to space, it is the cheapest. Celestis is the first company to do it, but its lowest offer is $12,500.
OTHER LUNAR MEMORIALS
Elysium Space also offers the Milky Way Memorial, in which ashes are sent into deep space and the Shooting Star Memorial, in which they are sent to Earth’s orbit and become a shooting star. You can find out more about the company on its website.
“From the first day we started Elysium Space and imagined awe-inspiring memorials, we thought that the Moon could create the quintessential commemoration. Offering this exceptional tribute within the reach of most families is an important part of this new chapter opening for our civilization,” Elysium Space CEO Thomas Ceveit said in the statement to the press.
