if done right, there would be no bill to foot and I didn’t understand what you meant in the first part of your post.

I think we should all start a drive to collect signatures to ask NASA to take James Doohan’s ashes to orbit in the next available shuttle flight.

This would be the most fitting end of this beloved actor who joined Science Fiction’s history as “Montgomery Scott” of the STAR TREK franchise.

He was the reason many became engineers. Let’s try our best.

It is also interesting that so many people think NASA should foot the bill.

Sorry Harry (er, Darth) but I’m going to have to disagree with you. Selling some private bit of memorabilia by using a character name has absolutely ZERO to do with the pain of losing a parent, and being forced to constantly relive that death through multiple failed attempts at putting said parent to rest. I think if you wanted to level criticism at the family on that unrelated subject, this probably was not the appropriate place to do it.

A small amount of Mr. Roddenberry’s ashes flew on Space Shuttle Mission STS-52 Columbia in October, 1992. They were not released into orbit, but came home aboard Columbia at the end of the mission.

Another vial of Mr. Roddenberry’s ashes were launched into orbit in April, 1997. This was part of the legitimate “space burial” company, which at that time contracted forn the burials to be launched as a secondary payload on Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Pegasus XL rocket. They were expected to naturally de-orbit in 2003-04.