You might not make it to heaven in the afterlife, but you sure can go as far as the moon. Celestial1 funerals are now a possibility, thanks to San Francisco startup Elysium Space. For a ginormous fee of about $12,000, the company will privately2 transport your cremated3 remains4 to the moon!
在来生里，你不一定去得了天堂，但你现在却能到月球那么远的地方。有了旧金山的“极乐世界”公司，“天葬”服务现在已成为可能。花费12000美元，该公司便会单独将您火化后的遗物运送至月球。
Founded by former NASA engineer Thomas Civeit, Elysium boasts of bringing space and funeral experts together to provide the unique service. "Families now have the historic opportunity to
commemorate5 their departed loved ones every night through the
everlasting6 splendour and soft illumination of the Earth's closest companion: the moon," they stated in a press release.
Although the company was founded in 2013, the service only offered in August of this year, after Elysium managed to seal a deal with space logistics company Astrobotic Technology. They're currently taking orders, and the first
batch7 of ashes will travel to the moon on Griffin Lander spacecraft – Astrobotic's
inaugural8 lunar mission - in 2017.
According to Civeit, the families who are
opting9 for the service usually have a special connection with space or the night sky. In fact, that's how the idea for the service came about. Elysium's initial plan was to run a service called Shooting Star Memorial, in which ashes are
briefly10 sent into orbit and return to Earth as a bright
streak11 across the atmosphere. But then they were approached with an unusual request by US Army
infantry12 soldier Steven Jenks.
Jenks, who lost his mother to lung cancer, wanted to send her remains to the moon because it was a special symbol of their relationship. She would always write to him: "No matter how lonely you feel and how far you are, always look to the Moon and know I am with you. I love you to the Moon and back, Love, Mom." So when he learned that Astrobotic was set up to send various payloads to the Moon, he asked if they could take his mother's ashes too.
"It was perfect timing," Civeit said. "Steven Jenks told his
touching13 story to Astrobotic as he wanted to have the ashes of his mother delivered to the moon. Astrobotic does not provide such services to individuals but we were signing our contract with Astrobotic at the time and we were honored to make Steven's wish come true." Jenks, of course, is happy to know that his mother's final resting place will be on the moon. "I will know she is looking down on my family and maybe they won't feel so alone," he said.
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