Star Trek Scotty's ashes lost in the desert
Last updated at 22:12pm on 11th May 2007
In Star Trek terms, it was a simple mission.
But the company that blasted the ashes of James Doohan - better known as
Scotty - into space has been forced to admit that the rocket they used has
been lost.
The plan was simple: the actor's remains, along with those of 213 others,
were put on board a rocket to be fired into 'sub-orbital space'.
The craft would shoot upwards 72 miles before splitting in two and
parachuting back to Earth so the ashes could be returned to relatives.
But the mission went drastically wrong and the rocket has been lost for
two weeks in the New Mexico desert.
Susan Schonfeld, of Space Services Inc, said that search teams has
repeatedly failed to find the craft in the area where it is believed to
have landed.
She said: "The terrain is very mountainous - it's not somewhere that you
can walk or drive to and the weather there has been horrendous."
The disaster will upset Doohan's widow, Wende, who has been planning the
send-off for two years since his death in 2005 at the age of 85.
She has said the man who travelled on so many missions with the Enterprise
always regretted that he never made it into space himself.
Doohan played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery Scott in
the original 1966-1969 Star Trek television series.
He inspired the legendary catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" - even though
it was never actually uttered on the show.
Space Services Inc. charges £250 to send a portion of a person's ashes
into suborbital space.
In 1997 the company blasted the remains of Star Trek creator Gene
Roddenberry into space.
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