James Doohan was a Canadian actor with a long career in films and television, but none of his roles were quite as famous or lasting as his time on Star Trek. On the classic science fiction show, Doohan played Scotty, the Enterprise’s engineer, and solved many of the various mechanical failures that arose while the crew traveled through space. Now, fifteen years after Doohan’s death, the actor has finally made it to space himself, with just a little bit of subterfuge.
It was during an interview with The Times that Richard Garriott, an American video game developer and entrepreneur revealed that he had smuggled the ashes onto the International Space Station during his own time visiting. In 2008, Garriott flew to the ISS for a twelve-day mission, during which he filmed Apogee of Fear, and, unbeknownst to anyone else, placed Doohan’s ashes aboard the station.
Garriott undertook the mission with the consent of Doohan’s son, Chris. According to his son, Doohan’s wish was to have his ashes placed aboard the ISS, but was denied explicit permission to do so on previous trips. This led to Chris Doohan and Richard Garriott conspiring to have the ashes placed somewhere they wouldn’t be noticed.
During his visit to the ISS, Garriott took a laminated card with Doohan’s picture and a portion of his ashes up with him. Once he had arrived at the ISS, he tucked the card under cladding on the floor of the Columbus module, where the card has remained ever since. The whole operation was kept secret until this past Christmas, when Chris Doohan revealed the whole event on Twitter.
In the time spent on the ISS, Doohan’s ashes travelled around the Earth over 70,000 times, traversing nearly 1.7 billion miles through space. Chris Doohan has also posted an image of a separate laminated card to Twitter, which Garriott kept with him and returned to Chris Doohan shortly after his trip.
Although it was a rather sneaky way of getting it done, it’s a nice gesture that allowed Doohan his wish of making it to the International Space Station. After dedicating so many years to some of the greatest space-faring stories ever told, his family can finally say James Doohan got the chance to visit the final frontier himself.
Source: Deadline
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