James Doohan as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in "Star Trek Generations" (1994)
Photo: ELLIOT MARKS / AP
“Hi Chris, Richard Garriott here, on board the ISS,” says the man in the blue shirt, “I just wanted to tell you: Mission accomplished.
Your father made it into space. ”Then the US millionaire, who became rich through video games, floats a laminated commemorative card with a picture of James Doohan.
The video, addressed to Doohan's son and published by the British newspaper The Times, must have been recorded by Garriott twelve years ago.
At that time he was staying on the International Space Station for twelve days as a space tourist.
The Canadian actor Doohan was best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, chief engineer of the "USS Enterprise" in the series "Star Trek".
He died in Redmond, Washington in July 2005 at the age of 85.
However, the last wish of the father of nine children was to be buried among the stars.
A great many people spent a great deal of money and effort in fulfilling it.
For a short time, Doohan's ashes first made it into space in 2007 with a SpaceLoft XL rocket, attached to a parachute, it floated back to the ground - and was lost in a mountain range for three weeks.
A second attempt was made in August 2008: the remains of a Falcon 1 rocket were to be in orbit for a few years.
But the launch on the Marshall Islands in the Pacific failed - the rocket fell into the sea after a good two and a half minutes.
Laminated ashes in the luggage
The third attempt has remained a secret until now: Richard Garriott received small amounts of the ashes from Doohan's son Chris in the mail.
He laminated them into three commemorative cards, as the millionaire told The Times, and in 2008 smuggled them on board the ISS.
He threw a card into space and hid one under a floor covering.
The third card is hanging at his home in California.
If the ashes were found in the luggage, there would have been a bit of trouble, Garriott says.
Or maybe not.
Because four years later, on May 22, 2012, the private spaceship Dragon C2 + took off towards the ISS - the five-meter-long space capsule had loaded almost 500 kilograms of supplies for the space station crew and also 307 capsules with a few grams of ashes from the deceased.
Including that of James Doohan.
About ten minutes after taking off from Cape Canaveral, the capsule came loose and a year later it was supposed to burn up when it entered the room atmosphere.
If Garriott's information is correct, Doohan's remains on board the ISS are still circling through space: in death, according to the Times, he traveled nearly 2.7 billion kilometers through space and orbited the earth more than 70,000 times.
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