The ashes of the late James Doohan, who played Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott in the original Star Trek television series, have been aboard the International Space Station for 12 years – and The Times of London has the fascinating story of how that happened. Doohan passed away in 2005 at the age of 85 and his family wanted to make his wish to get on the ISS come true.
Official requests to bring Doohan’s ashes to the ISS were denied, but Richard Garriott – one of the first private citizens to travel to the space station – managed to smuggle some of Doohan’s ashes into the Columbus module of the space station. Garriott says he took a laminated photo of Doohan and some of his ashes and put it under the floor of the Columbus. He hasn’t told anyone about the project – only he and Doohan’s family knew about it so far.
“It was completely underground,” Garriott told The Times. “Her family were very happy that the ashes had accumulated there, but we were all disappointed that we hadn’t been able to talk about it publicly for so long. Now enough time has passed for us to do this, “
This is not the first time that Doohan’s ashes have entered the heavens. Some of its ashes were aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket in 2008, but that rocket failed within minutes of launch. And in 2012, an urn containing some of Doohan’s ashes flew into space aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9. According to the Times, Doohan’s ashes traveled some 1.7 billion kilometers in space and have circled the Earth more than 70,000 times.
Chris, Doohan’s son, thanked Garriott for smuggling his late father’s ashes aboard the ISS. “What he did was touching – it meant so much to me, so much to my family and it would have meant so much to my father,” he says.
Years after his death, Scotty still goes bold… well, you know the rest.
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