What Can We Learn From Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry (Again)? Exploring Space Burials and End-of-Life Planning

What Can We Learn From Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry (Again)?

Do I have a story for you! Gene Roddenberry’s personal life was almost as exciting as his imagination. Gene was known for his affairs with secretarial staff. While married to his first wife, Eileen, he was also in a relationship with both Majel Barrett and Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek cast member known as the USS Enterprise crew member Uhura). Nichelle did not want to be “the other woman to the other woman” and ended her relationship with Gene. Gene divorced his first wife and married Majel in 1974. From 1975 until his death in 1991, Roddenberry maintained an extramarital relationship with his executive assistant, Susan Sackett LOL

Thanks to modern technology, sometime in 2024, the cremated ashes of Gene, his second wife, Majel (who passed away in 2008), AND former mistress Nichelle (who passed away in 2022), along with 193 others’, will all travel into deep space, beyond the Earth-Moon system, and past the James Webb telescope orbit around the Sun indefinitely. Celestis, promoter of space burial services since 1994, will launch the first-of-its-kind memorial spaceflight and allow family and friends a real-time tracking tool to keep tabs on their loved ones while their remains travel through deep space. That’s so nice!

It’s unclear how the beneficiaries of Gene, Majel, and Nichelle all got it together to get all three of them on the same inaugural Voyager mission but it’s happening!

What Can We Learn from this “Ultimate Road Trip”?

• Disposition of Remains: Typically, these burial instructions are left in our last will or in a separate document titled “disposition of remains,” but in my opinion, if you have specific wishes, the best way to ensure that your wishes will be followed is to make those plans and pay for them now. If the plans are made and paid for, there is a much higher chance that those wishes will be followed per your instructions.

So, there you have it. We learn that it’s possible to be catapulted into deep space after death, that making final arrangements is important and that I’m a big nerd that loves Star Trek!