NASA's remaining shuttle is nearly 30 years old and scheduled to be retired in 2010. NASA's new spaceship, Orion, won't be ready for launch until 2015, according to the current budget and schedule. NASA is reported to be examining alternatives for maintaining space transport, either moving up the completion date for Orion—an expensive strategy—or else extending the current shuttle program (also expensive, and with every trip the aging shuttle runs a higher risk of accident or disaster.)
NASA's quandary is nothing new. In fact, it brings up the same problem we've been looking at pretty much since our first ventures into space: what's the best way to get there? Putting stuff on a big rocket, fueled with super-test fossil-fuels, and blasting it into space by sheer force has worked pretty well, so far. Except it's expensive, and rockets tend to blow up, since . . . well . . . they're explosive by design.
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Celestis have conducted a number of space burials and the writer Timothy Leary and Start Trek actor James Doohan were both cremated with their ashes being launched into space to orbit the earth.
