Even Star Trek's Scotty Couldn't Help Doomed Falcon 1

The level of irony in this story is dangerously overwhelming. It turns out that there was more to the payload of that recent SpaceX Falcon 1 launch that failed to reach orbit (again). It turns out also on board were the ashes of the late James Doohan, better known to Trekkies as Scotty, the Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise from the original TV version of Star Trek. Also on board were the ashes of NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts. Their ashes were to be blasted into low-Earth orbit on the doomed Falcon 1 rocket in a service provided by Celestis, Inc, a company that specializes in memorial spaceflights. As if this story wasn't ironic enough already, this fiasco comes on the heels of an attempt last year to launch Doohan and Cooper on board a suborbital rocket in New Mexico that crash landed magnificently in the mountains of the White Sands Missile Range. After a search and recovery effort in New Mexico that took a week's time, Celestis arranged for the two to hitch a ride on Saturday's ill-fated launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1. The ashes of Scotty, known on the show for giving his starship more power when it was desperately needed, apparently hasn't been enough for his two real world galactic jaunts. Unfortunately, I'm starting to think Scotty's ashes just couldna teek namoore.

(New York Times via Engadget)

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