Being Buried on the Moon Now Costs About the Same as an Average Funeral

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Dealing with the burial arrangements of your loved ones can be a difficult process, but a company has now made it possible to simply ship off cremated remains to the moon. Elysium Space, based in San Francisco, announced this month that it will soon be offering lunar burials for a starting price of $9,950. Instead of sending your dearly departed six feet under, now you can send them over 200,000 miles above.

Elysium Space's first lunar burial will be for the late mother of a US Army infantry soldier, Steven Jenks, from Tennessee, who would write in her letters to her son while he was in Iraq, "always look at the moon and know I am with you."

"It's a privilege to provide an experience that will allow families to commemorate and honor loved ones by directly connecting them with the moon in the night sky," said John Thornton, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology (a company that has teamed up with Elysium to offer the burials), in a press release.

Elysium Space has begun accepting reservations for their Lunar Memorial service. The first 50 participants will pay the starting price; beyond that, the price will increase to $11,950—still not far off from the $7,000-$10,000 average price of a funeral in the United States.

Once a spot is reserved, the company ships out a kit containing a custom-engraved ash capsule and a small scoop for transferring a "symbolic portion of the remains." Unfortunately, the Elysium is only accepting cremated remains under a gram per customer at this time.

Once shipped back to the company, the capsule is placed in a spacecraft module. Remains will then be sent into space via an Astrobotics lander from a to-be-determined launch point: either Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; or Wallops, Virginia.

Over 450 people have had their remains sent to space since 1992, the first being Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek. This will not be the first lunar burial either—the remains of geologist Eugene Shoemaker were sent to the moon in 1998.

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