Sky & Telescope July 1998 [antikvár]

spectrumWmAshes to Ashes A quarter century ago I came to know Gene Shoemaker at a tiny, private meeting at the famous Hotel Pierre in New York City.Sagan was there, Asimov too the coolest guest list I'll ever make up! We had gathered to explore a new way to spark science education in a failing system.Gene was already celebrated among the cognoscenti. And his public star was rising too, eventually to culminate with Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Brilliant as a scientist, and avant garde for appreciating the Armageddon impacting bodies might inflict on Earth, he was also one of the most personable people I have ever met.But should an ounce of his ashes have been flown to the Moon aboard Lunar Prospector? In life he wanted to go, as David Levy explains on page 84. My romantic side applauds this idea; my pragmatic side wonders. For example, after the launch, the Navajo Nation protested the placement of human remains on the Moon; to the Navajo it is sacrilege. NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, Wesley Huntress, could only respond by saying, "We sincerely regret any unintended offense."In order to meet the spacecraft's launch schedule, NASA's decision had to be rushed. Informal approval was granted less than two weeks after Carolyn Porco, Shoemaker's former graduate student, suggested the inclusion of an ashes-bearing capsule.It's this rush to judgment that troubles me, the failure to develop a poHcy before the action. Responding to my letter to NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, and a Freedom of Information Act request, a NASA spokesperson wrote that "future actions by NASA of this nature will be governed by a policy now being developed."But what if the pope requests tomorrow that his ashes be sent on a NASA mission, or if Charles Manson decides that postmortem space travel would provide salvation? How would NASA respond? Would these folks hear: "Welcome aboard!" or "Sorry, we fly only scientist friends."? In a telephone interview Huntress allowed that the ashes-bearing flight was extraordinary, though "for this particular man, this was the right thing to do," he said. Yet Huntress made it clear that such mission augmentations would not be regularly carried out.I've been assured by NASA that the cost of the capsule was paid for by private funds and that its integration did not threaten the spacecraft's viability. (The capsule was purchased from Celestis, which commercially flies cremated remains Star Trek's Gene Roddenberry has already taken a ride as have spaced-out Timothy Leary and ftiturist Gerard O'Neill.)Yet this affair seems too untidy, too unprofessional, for my taste. Lunar Prospector was not our last flight to the Moon. Heaven could have waited! / : ry y.