Beam Me Up, Scotty

[Foxbat]

Attention Star Trek memorabilia collectors: Get your pale butts out to the deserts of New Mexico.

So, dfergie, have you located anything yet?

The rocket carrying the ashes was supposed to orbit the Earth then return.

I don't understand how a ground-launched, single-stage vehicle is supposed to achieve orbit. I wasn't aware that current propellants have sufficient ISP to achieve orbital flight without losing most of the launch vehicle along the way.

And poor Wende Doohan. This can't be easy on her.

 

[Bob Haller]

the return capsule has been located after its sub orbital flight.

living people could send their hair and fingernails, keeping the returned sample as a momento

 

[dfergie]

(Other side of the state Foxbat )

Ashes recovered from spaceport flight
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. (AP) - A rocket payload that flew briefly into space with ashes of astronaut Gordon Cooper and “Star Trek” actor James Doohan was recovered Friday in the New Mexico mountains.
The payload was found in its designated recovery zone 20 days after Farmington, Conn.-based UP Aerospace sent it up in a 20-foot rocket on April 28.
The rocket, the first to be successfully launched into space from the fledgling Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, made a 4-minute suborbital flight before drifting back to Earth.
On board were partial ashes from Cooper, Doohan — who played Scotty on “Star Trek” — and 200 others, including John Meredith Lucas, a writer for the original “Star Trek” series.
The payload landed in rocky, steep terrain in the San Andres Mountains on White Sands Missile Range, east of the spaceport, and was found by a UP Aerospace crew with help from White Sands.
UP Aerospace co-founder Eric Knight said the payload “landed where we wanted it to be. It was just in difficult terrain.”
“And some days, the weather was not cooperative,” he said.
Wende Doohan, James Doohan’s widow, said he “was in great company with Gordon and Meredith Lucas.”
“He probably wished he could have stayed” in space, Doohan said in a telephone interview from her home in Renton, Wash.
“When Senator John Glenn went up in space (aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1998), he said, ‘They’re starting to use seniors now,’ and he wanted to put his name on the list,” Doohan said.
The remains of the 202 people were in sealed metal capsules designed to withstand the rigors of space flight.
The cylinders will be mounted on plaques mentioning the space flight and given to the families who provided the ashes.
Source: KOB