Cremains–A New Use for Space
In 1984, Americans only knew space as a pristine place filled with glistening satellites where NASA astronauts performed experiments for the benefit of all mankind. Occasionally, the public would hear of the military conducting secret missions in space. Essentially, NASA defined what Americans thought of space, and what outer space should be used for. Up until this point in time, everything that was done in space was good for all of us on this planet.
It is curious that one of the most important licensing actions was also the first action for a payload, not a launch. The world little knew at the time of the impact of this action, and perhaps even today gives it little attention. However, in my opinion, this action had a significant impact on the potential directions for commercial space commerce.
It started with a visit from Charlie Chafer, the Washington representative for Space Services Inc, who stated: “We have a potential customer and a payload. We need to know if we can get the payload approved even though we don’t have a launch.”
This wasn’t an unexpected question. The reader needs to remember that until this time, the only participants in space regulation were NASA, the Air Force, commercial satellite companies who had FCC approval for their services, and other nations. In essence, space was only used for NASA research, communications and remote sensing satellites, and military purposes. The concept of using space for other things outside of those areas and organizations had never been tested. Because NASA and the military were the only US avenues for access to space, they were able to select and filter what went into space.
Charlie Chafer described the customer and the payload. The customer had a creative idea of launching cremated human remains (cremains) into space. The idea was to fit the ashes of the deceased into lipstick size tubes, and then when enough had been assembled, launch the cremains into space for “burial”. Charlie needed a “payload approval” to demonstrate to the customer that this would be allowed. Without advance approval, the company couldn’t market its concept because no one would believe that such a practice would be permissible.
In the early days, this was an important issue, not only for payloads but for launches as well. Even though the US government had stated commercial companies could launch space vehicles, there were many people in the commercial satellite sector or potential launch vehicle customers who were saying that when “push came to shove”, the US government was not going to allow a private launch. Those doubts would continue until we actually issued the first licenses. But in the case of cremains, even greater doubts existed because this hardly had a lofty purpose such as world-wide communications, or space research that would arguably benefit mankind.
Later, Deke Slayton, president of Space Services Inc., and I were talking about the concept. I asked him in what form he thought the capsules would be released, e.g. in a large container? “I imagine we would release them together at the same time, and they would just drift into space.” Although orbital debris hadn’t surfaced as a big issue yet, it seemed to me that it could be an issue that should be raised in an application. Deke said, “If that was going to be an issue, I suppose we could do something that would keep them together. That wouldn’t be a problem.”
Sometime later, SSI submitted it’s application—and all the lipstick capsules would be contained in a single pod. The Commercial Space Launch Act contained a requirement that we coordinate a launch license application with NASA and the US Air Force. This was a weakness in the licensing process. Each Agency had its own concepts and vision of the appropriate applications of space which until this point in time they controlled entirely. NASA in the past had rejected payloads as inappropriate when it was the only US civil launching agency. It had to determine which experiments and payloads got the limited and expensive space on its vehicles. NASA was accustomed to the notion that some endeavors were “worthy” and some were not.
On the other hand, if the commercial space transportation sector was to succeed, the government, in my view, could not be in the role of judging what was appropriate. Although up until this time governments had decided how space should be used, now and in the future, the private sector and non-government entities would be making those decisions. If a payload was not a threat to safety or could be made to be safe, then the government had to approve it—even if it meant that space would end up used for many “base” functions like the daily life scenes seen in the Stars Wars movies. In this sense, approving a payload of cremains would be a precedent-setting action. For better or for worse, it was going to open up the door to many uses that the government had not envisioned, and some people found distasteful.
The biggest test of this was going to be the coordination process for the cremains payload with NASA and the Air Force. Our legislation stated that we had to coordinate with both Agencies, but it didn’t say how or what parts. In designing the licensing process, we had purposely excluded NASA and the Air Force from the safety review portion of the launch license; we did coordinate with them on the payload review. It was easy to justify that the approval of the launch vehicle safety was purely technical, in the same way that FAA doesn’t coordinate with other agencies on aircraft certification. Since the license approval involved two different reviews, that left only the payload review to coordinate with NASA and the Air Force.
The problem with coordinating with the Air Force and NASA on the payload was that it could subject a payload to judgments that were moral or subjective in nature, rather than purely technical or safety focused. Cremains, if anything, would be the commercial application that could bring on a reaction. We had no intention of permitting introduction of that type of evaluation into the approval process.
We sent the payload proposal to both NASA and the Air Force with a carefully written cover letter. The cover letter introduced the SSI submission as a part of the application for a launch license and stated that this package represented the “coordination” required in the Commercial Space Launch Act. The letter also specified that we were not requesting their opinions on the proposal, nor on the desirability of the concept. They were being asked to identify whether anything in the proposal would jeopardize life or safety. Soon thereafter the US Air Force responded with a letter stating that they saw no safety issues. NASA’s response was hand-carried to me by a NASA representative whom I knew well. His message: they couldn’t say it in the letter because we said they could only address safety, but NASA believed that this was not the best use of outer space.
In all fairness, it wasn’t only NASA that felt that way. At the time, there were many people in the space community who wondered whether launching cremains went too far. Some people even asked me if this could lead to “billboards” in space. In some respects, cremains was pushing the envelope of the prevailing vision of space as created by NASA.
In February 1985, I proudly signed the approval of cremains as a payload for SSI. In the intervening time since cremains was approved, thousands of people have had their ashes sent into space. Among them: Dr. Timothy Leary, Gene Roddenberry, James Doohan (Scotty on Star Trek) and Gordon Cooper (one of the original seven astronauts).
Today, one can read about trips to Mars, mining of the moon, and many other industrial uses of space. In a sense, they were all made to seem natural because someone before them got approval to use space as one big cemetery.