Anjana Sriram's Weblog

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations — to boldly go where no man has gone before."

The classic Star Trek features the adventures of the Constitution-class U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 dispatched by the Earth-based Starfleet Command to explore the galaxy. I have been an ardent viewer of this serial on television (a total of three seasons). Mesmerizing exploits of Captain Kirk and his stalwart crew are legendary, facing bizarre situations with tremendous stakes, and managing to solve them with ingenuity, courage and passion. Whether their adventure involved confronting shapeshifting monsters, planet-eating behemoths, noncorporeal entities who feed off fear, highly evolved beings who feel compelled to pass judgment, or fellow humans gone astray, the Enterprise crew remained true to their values and steadfast in their determination to press forward into the unknown.

The "five-year mission" lasted only three years in Earth TV time. But the legacy of those three years of Star Trek gave the world a phenomenon unmatched in the history of television. My favorites were Captain Kirk, his half-Vulcan first officer Commander Spock , chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, opinionated and passionate chief medical officer, Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy.

As a tribute to this legenday actor, a rocket (on April 28th 2007) carried the cremated remains of James Montgomery Doohan was lifted and achieved space. The rocket reached an apogee (maximum altitude) of 72.7 miles. The launch took place out of Spaceport America in New Mexico, near White Sands Missile Range, and was arranged by Celestis Memorial Spaceflights, a subsidiary of Space Services Inc. John Meredyth Lucas, an original series writer/director/producer who died in 2002, was also part of the mission.

This flight was an "Earth-Return" mission, meaning the payload containing the ashes of the deceased was intended to achieve an altitude of about 70 miles — reaching a weightless environment — and then arc back down and parachute safely to Earth for recovery.