James Doohan spent a large part of his life aboard one of the most famous fictional space ships in history, Star Trek‘s USS Enterprise, as Montogomery “Scotty” Scott. Now, 15 years after his passing, we find out he’s still on the edge of the final frontier.
According to Richard Garriott, when he visited the International Space Station back in 2008, he brought a photo of Doohan with some of the late actor’s ashes laminated on it. Garriott then took the opportunity to hide the photo and ashes under a piece of the station’s flooring. Since arriving aboard the station 12 years ago, the ISS has made over 70,000 orbits and travelled more than 1.7 billion miles through space.
The scheme to bring Scotty to the station came together just days before Garriott’s launch when Chris Doohan, the actor’s son, reached out to discuss the possibility of getting his father’s ashes into space.
Garriott, a video game entrepreneur flew to the ISS aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule for a 12 day mission as a “private astronaut.” He paid the Russian Space Agency $30 million dollars for the opportunity. His father was US astronaut Owen Garriott who served aboard STS 9 on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1983 and also set a record spending 60 days in space aboard Skylab 3 back in 1973.
Besides the lure of space in his genes, it seems humorous space antics also run in the family. During his Skylab mission, the elder Garriott was part of his own “stowaway in space” story. On September 10, 1973, NASA staff in Houston were surprised to hear a woman’s voice coming from Skylab. Especially startled was Bob Crippen, the capsule communicator (CAPCOM), who she called by name. The voice went on to say “The boys haven’t had a home-cooked meal in so long I thought I’d bring one up.” The mysterious voice would go on to describe the site of forest fires seen from orbit, and the sunrise before wrapping up “Oh oh. I have to cut off now. I think the boys are floating up here toward the command module and I’m not supposed to be talking to you.” As it turned out, Owen Garriott had recorded his wife, Helen, during a private radio transmission the night before, and played it back to ground control.
We are only finding about Doohan’s ashes now, 12 years later, because the video game tycoon shared the story with The Times. “It was completely clandestine,” said Garriott. “His family was pleased that the ashes made it up there but were disappointed we didn’t get to talk about it publicly. Now enough time has passed that we can. James Doohan got his resting place among the stars.”
