Go Your Own Way

Lo Carmen converses with Jason Leach from And Vinyly about living on beyond the groove and becoming a record after your death and Charles Chafer from Celestis Memorial Space Flights about making dreams come true and sending 'ashtronauts' on the ultimate trip to space... 

'Death Is Not The End' theme music was written, recorded and performed by Peter Head.

'Death Is Not The End' sting, performed & recorded by Peter Head, composed by Bob Dylan

'Put Another Record On' by Lo Carmen, from the album Lovers Dreamers Fighters

'Into the Universe' performed by Holiday Sidewinder from the album Face of God, composed by Holiday Sidewinder, Nick Littlemore, William Jay Stein, used with permission from Lab 78.

'Go Your Own Way' performed by William Tyler, used with permission. Composed by Lindsey Buckingham.

'Fly Me To The Moon' performed by Peter Head. Composed by Bart Howard.

'Space Cowboy' version by Lo Carmen.

Answer machine message by Aden Young.

Répertoire licensed by APRA AMCOS.

Death Is Not the End was created, written, recorded and edited by Lo Carmen 

© Black Tambourine Productions. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Go Your Own Way
• 4:07 Jason Leach/And Vinyly conversation
• 23:50 Charles Chafer/ Celestis Memorial Space Flights conversation

Transcript

Lo Carmen: 0:00

Look, despite the name of this podcast, we all know that when confronted with death, it really is very final, and finding a way of accepting that is often tremendously difficult for many reasons. So finding a special way to celebrate and send off our loved ones or planning for our own special future death care is one way to help us move through or towards this transition with more positivity, even something to be joyful about. In recent years, there's been an explosion of things that you can do with cremated remains. Cremains is the funeral industry term for this or what we regular people generally call ashes. They can now be grown into diamonds. Yes, real diamonds. They can be used to create other kinds of memorial jewellery or glass paperweights or tactile stones that you can hold in your hand and take anywhere with you. They can be exploded in fireworks or bullets. The mind truly boggles with the amount of things that you can do with cremains. They can also be used to create memorial reefs that help regenerate ocean life. And approximately 18 years ago, while sitting on the couch in the middle of the night with my new small sleepless baby surfing the World Wide Web, I came across an article about a company called And Finally. that would sprinkle ashes into a real playable vinyl record. Now, for those of you that have ended up here somehow but don't know me, hi, I'm your host, Lowe Carmen. I'm a musician and music is my life. So my immediate reaction was just total relief with the recognition that yes, hallelujah, that's what I want done with my remains when I go. I want to be a record. The thought of that just filled me with a kind of peace and satisfaction. The idea of being buried or having my ashes scattered had just never sat right with me. I didn't have any particular place that was super meaningful to me, and like many of us, I'd just never come to terms with the idea of dying, really. And that's what I'm wanting to do here with Death Is Not The End. Like I said, I'm a musician and a writer, a songwriter, I'm not an expert, but I am deeply curious and I do love to research and explore and discover things. So I'd love for you to join me on the journey I'm going to take through all the different ways we can approach the inevitable finale of our stories. And as I began the process of pondering all of this, of making this podcast, I thought back to that very first article about the ashes in the records And I wondered if perhaps I'd just hallucinated the whole thing. After all, it was a long time ago and I was severely sleep deprived at the time. So I let my fingers do the walking and I discovered and finally was indeed real. It still existed. And Jason Leach was the name of the man behind it. So Jason was the very first person that I reached out to and he kindly agreed to an interview. I'm in Sydney, Australia and he's in Scarborough, England. So because of our time differences, I spoke to him bleary-eyed at 5 a.m., He'd just finished work and was sitting down with a beer. I could give you an introduction to his story and set it all up, but I can guarantee you that hearing the story from Jason himself is going to be far more entertaining and enjoyable. So here we go.

Jason Leach: 4:03

And Vi nyly is now a company. It was originally an idea for something I wanted to do myself where I got to the point in my life where I realised I was going to die. I wouldn't live forever. I was sure I would for quite a long time. Very much later than I should have done. I would refuse to admit it. And my mum suddenly out of the blue got a job at Funeral Directors. She's Swiss, so she's very straight up and organised and to the point, shall we say. And I was in my, what was I, maybe about... I suppose, 35 or something like that, at that age. And she was saying, look, there's lots of young men your age, young men, middle-aged men, who are coming through here and you need to get yourself, you know, you need to start thinking about what will happen. Oh,

Lo Carmen: 4:52

right. So she wasn't suggesting it as a business idea. She was just saying, you need to think about your life.

Jason Leach: 4:57

Yeah, you need to think about what's going to happen. Yeah, what's going to happen.

Lo Carmen: 5:02

Did you have a family at that point?

Jason Leach: 5:03

Yeah, just very young, very, very young family. And So she was saying, you know, you've got to think about these things and stop pretending it's not going to happen. So that was going on. What was your reaction to that? Well, I mean, this is part of it. My reaction was I just didn't want to think about it. I was like, stop it. I don't want to talk about it. And afterwards I thought, you know, why am I like that? Why do I, why am I sort of... palming it off why don't i want to talk about it or think about it and it's obviously because you're frightened about it and because you've not been faced by it i you know i i started thinking more and more about it and then when i spoke to my friends and peers they were like i was they didn't want to talk about it i mean literally they're like oh god downer You know, we're here at the pub. I was like, yeah, but I was just wondering, you know, what do you... And some people actually get angry if I pushed them a bit about what they thought about it. They just didn't want to think about it. So I started to get interested from that side.

Lo Carmen: 6:07

So would you literally be saying things like, have you thought about what you want to do when you die?

Jason Leach: 6:11

Yeah, I started saying, well, mum's been telling me that there's loads of people our age, you know, the shocking amount, actually, that are coming, people who just hadn't considered it and thought about it. And it becomes a problem, you know, and, you know, what are you going to do? And people just didn't want to think about it. And, you know, we've grown up without being exposed at all to it. Our grandparents and great-grandparents lived in villages. Yeah, they were, you know, they were surrounded by it, really. Regularly, there'd be somebody they knew who passed away or died. So it wasn't something that they were pushing to the back of their mind. and um so i started thinking why wow this is weird and this was in about 2005 2006 so yeah 35 36 i was and around that time i think i saw on the news hunter s thompson had um put his ashes in fireworks and i thought wow that's really cool

Lo Carmen: 7:11

The American writer and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson asked his friend Johnny Depp to make sure that his funeral wishes were carried out after his death. He wanted his ashes to be exploded from fireworks, shot from a cannon sculpted as a red, white and blue clenched fist, holding a peyote button. This is his signature symbol. Johnny paid $3 million for the event, which included building a 150-foot tower on the grounds of Hunter's Colorado Ranch. Johnny said, I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out. Anita Thompson, Hunter's wife, planned to then build a memorial pond on their land with a headstone inscribed with one of Hunter's favourite sayings. It never got weird enough for me.

Jason Leach: 8:04

I do like that. It's something you can plan and it's fun. People can watch something happen. So I kind of like that idea. And I was just thinking about it. I thought, well, you know, I'd like my great-great-grandchildren to be able to play a record and hear my voice hear what I was thinking at the time, what was important to me maybe, what music I liked, maybe a joke at the time, I don't know, anything like that. I thought, you know, I want to be in a record. So I started a website with a friend of mine and really it was fun. It was full of really bad puns which are still some of them still last like live on from beyond the groove and riv and resting vinyl but

Lo Carmen: 8:48

on that site great ones on the website i'd like to see all the outtakes as well you

Jason Leach: 8:53

really i wish a flash is gone now but the original site is like i say it was not a business it was not meant to be it was really me sort of coming to terms and sort of dealing with this to sell any it was just fun you know fun with a sort of dark humor yes and we We had 10 steps to immortality with the first step being dying. So that's how it started. But it got huge coverage in the press just from being there and people spotting it and then just people passing it around. And this is very... Still, it's not very early days of the internet, of course, but it was well before things like Twitter and things like that.

Lo Carmen: 9:35

Yeah, before everyone was 24 hours a day connected.

Jason Leach: 9:38

Exactly, yeah. So we were getting... Lots and lots of people contacting us from magazines and newspapers and radio shows talking about it. And I put the price just sort of phenomenally high at the time because I didn't want to. It was never meant to be a business. And at the time I was trialing. you know, using ashes from fires and things like that and trying to make records and see how I can make them work for myself because that's what I put in my will. That's what I want to happen to me because

Lo Carmen: 10:09

I've decided. Right, so you wanted to see how ashes in vinyl work because people put all kinds of crazy things in vinyl, don't they? Well,

Jason Leach: 10:15

they can do, you can do.

Lo Carmen: 10:16

Paint and what other kinds of things?

Jason Leach: 10:19

You can get coloured vinyl and you can get, I mean, there's all sorts of things that can be done. I mean, ashes is a bit of a funny one. Depending on what it is the ashes are of, they can be quite gritty or sometimes they're soft and that's fine. So you've got to make sure it's going to work. you know, it's going to play. Vinyl at the time was very much, very unpopular, like I said, and felt like it might be on its way out. I actually started a record label at the time called Death to Vinyl, which was, you know, sort of ironic really because I love vinyl, but I was sort of thinking, well, you know, it's probably on its way out and ended up doing it. And now I'm doing it regularly and I've got arrangements set up around the world with funeral directors who are open-minded enough want to offer it and a few sort of intermediate parties that offer different things you can do with ashes and so yeah we're doing it sort of globally now and um it's something that i'm doing regularly on a regular basis from day to day i'm working on it sort of pretty much all the time so it's a crazy crazy situation really because like i say it was not planned but it's just ended up being the case

Lo Carmen: 11:33

wow so people can send you ashes from all around the world is that right

Jason Leach: 11:38

yeah i mean the thing is when we make a record we we we use it's about a teaspoon a record you can't put too much in because it won't play or you risk it not playing you and you want to put enough in so you can see it most of our vinyls are clear vinyl or trend a colored clear vinyl because you really want to be able to see the ash in there. It's

Lo Carmen: 11:59

very pretty, isn't it? Yeah,

Jason Leach: 12:02

it sort of spreads out. So it looks quite good. And every one's different. Every single one, obviously, it's sort of random because it's going through a pressing process. So you can't plan how it will come out. It's not the whole urn. So it's not restricted. You've always got to check what the rules are in your areas. But generally, if you're trying to send an entire urn, you've got a lot of red tape in most countries and you know sending it through customs and there's quite a lot involved some countries more than others but we're not dealing with that we're dealing with a with a very small amount generally most people have between one and ten twelve is about the maximum um maybe twenty and often it's one or three or four the first One we did with Human Ashes was a French lady whose husband had passed away. He was actually younger than me. It was quite sad. And often it is, you know, they're often very touching stories. But they're really cool people often because, you know, to like their idea, they're obviously of a certain ilk, you know. And I think actually he'd seen the website. He was unwell. And he said, that's what I want to do. And she was one of the ones. I mean, we're in the U.S. and she's in France so she actually came over with a friend they got the ferry and I met them and picked the ashes up and then we did the records and then we met them again and gave her the rest of the ashes so we did that one sort of like that very much hands-on that was the first one we did So it was quite nerve-wracking because obviously, like I said, I

Lo Carmen: 13:42

never... Handling human ashes for the first time.

Jason Leach: 13:44

Well, not so much that. It was that I hadn't, because it wasn't meant to be a business, I hadn't, you know, I hadn't thought, right, well, if I'm going to be doing this, I've got a responsibility to deal with people who will be mourning and et cetera. And it sounds sort of bad to say, but I'm very pleased, relieved and proud to say that, you know, I've managed to deal with it very well and Everybody so far has been very, very happy. I mean, more than when we get friends and family, lots of people who just say thanks so much. Particularly sort of friends and extended family, maybe, who wouldn't normally have something to remember them by. These are great because they might mean more to a friend who's spent the last 20 years with them than maybe their mum or something like this. The mums, obviously, and their very close family, it's a very different situation and the vinyl might not mean anything to them they might still have the vast majority of the ashes that they either keep or they've sprinkled or whatever but for friends and maybe extended family who spent more time socializing with them more latterly you know it happened to me I've had two friends who I've made music with pass away in the last sort of 10 years and one of them particularly I'd spent the last sort of 20 odd years almost literally we lived above each other we went and and touring together and spent every minute of every day for 20 years but I didn't know his family you know it's a hard job to even get along to the service that was offered you know because they didn't know it wasn't their fault but they didn't know I'd never gone and met them I'd never spent any time at his home so of course I wasn't actually invited so I might not even go to the service or be able to be part of sort of the farewell as it were So when contact from friends who maybe don't know a close family of someone, they're so appreciative of having something that they can keep and, you know, remember their very close friend by, you know. So these are things that I didn't expect, which we're learning about, you know, as we've been doing what we do.

Unknown: 15:56

Thank you.

Lo Carmen: 16:18

What kind of things do people put on the records? Them talking or?

Jason Leach: 16:23

Yeah, all sorts. It might be them singing a song at Christmas somewhere. It might be their answer phone message. It might be their favourite song. They might be a musician. It might be their music. It might be recordings that were taken, maybe when they were recording their children, for example. But they happen to be in the background. They're often very good ones because they weren't thinking of recording themselves. You need really get somebody then we literally had people let their message they left on their phone things like that are quite quite good and you know they're profound really when you you hear that on a vinyl

Answering Machine Message: 17:05

hello hello sorry i can't take your call i'm probably just well who knows where i am might be down the shop so it could be at the pub it could be anywhere couldn't I? Go on, leave me a message. I'll get back to you, maybe.

Jason Leach: 17:17

If someone really liked, I don't know, let's say fishing, for example, we'd say, well, look, go where they like going. Record the sound of it. You know, even if the wind's blowing on their microphone, you know, things like that, I think are great because it's really good to think about What would mean something to your great-great-great-grandchild? And, you know, definitely your voice moving the air in the room is a beautiful thought. You know, I think probably the closest we'll get to time travel, at least for a few hundred thousand years, I don't know.

Lo Carmen: 17:57

Let's slip into a...

Jason Leach: 18:07

People always say, well, what are you going to have on yours? And it's like, well, it's an ever-changing compilation. which will be whatever it is when the time comes, because it will never be right. I'll always, if you can look back, God, I wish I hadn't put that on there or whatever, but it's too late for that. And every, you know, you'll get something will change in your life. And this is what I liked about the idea is it's like, well, what do you want to leave? And it just thinking like that. kind of changes the way you live for the better because you're like, well, how do I want to be remembered? And the beauty of it is you can design your artwork, you can design your label, you can decide what audio is going to go on there. and if you've if you've made got to that point which like i say i don't think i ever will you can actually we'll make everything we'll print the labels print the sleeves we'll even make records that are playable so you'll have finished copies of exactly what you will be in and you'll have everything ready the plates will be done all the cost is done so all that needs to happen is to press the records with the ashen with your involvement as it were at the end so we can plan them they're really good in that regard and people really enjoy the process of planning it designing the sleeves and doing it is a kind of a good it's a real nice way of um sort of considering and facing the inevitable. Yeah. And I'm actually working with a, it's a, it's a guy used to, yeah exactly. And there's a guy used to work for, I used to play for in Switzerland, a really good club there, Bikini Test, it was called. And he used to organize the party. He always used to work at an old people's home and he works there full time now. And he's actually working there planning something like six or seven and vinylies with these old people who just love it because he's It's giving them something to think about and they're choosing what goes on and they're looking through their photos. And I want this one on there of me. And these are people who are sort of, you know, being looked after really in homes. They might not have family left or they might have some, but they can't help them or whatever. They all just love it. It gives them something to sort of focus on and enjoy creating really. And so he's like recording them now and asking them about what they did and memories and, So all sorts of things will come out of the woodwork, I'm sure. My favourite ones are the ones where there's a lot of personal sort of spoken words or environments or those ones I think are amazing because they're going to mean a lot to people. You know, I often think, God, I'd love to have my great, great, great granddads from, you know, 1700s, you know, and I'm going to be able to leave something that won't rot away. It will last. It doesn't take up too much space. There's always going to be a record player and someone in 200 years who's one of my descendants will be able to put me on and play me. It's pretty cool.

Lo Carmen: 21:16

Now everybody's asking me But maybe becoming a record is not for you. Maybe there's something else that you'd like to do with yourself or with the remains of the person that you love. Like Hunter S. Thompson, Timothy Leary, the American psychologist, futurist, writer, researcher and advocate of psychedelic experiences, faced death with an inspiring kind of vigor and sense of adventure. Before his death he wrote, Let us have no more pious, wimpy talk about death. The time has come to talk cheerfully and joke sassily about personal responsibility for managing the dying process. And he wrote about finding creative alternatives to, as he put it, He described this kind of approach as designer dying and said, it's a hip, chic, vogue thing to do. It's the most elegant thing you can do. Even if you've lived your life like a complete slob, you can die with terrific style. One of my favorite things that he said was that you've got to approach your death the way you live your life. with curiosity, with hope, with fascination, with courage and with the help of your friends. I agree 100% with that and I find it very beautiful. And so after exploring a multitude of alternative options, what did Mr Timothy Leary choose to do when he died? Well, he asked his close friend Carol Rosen to find a way to send him to space. She was beside him as he died and reported that his last words were, Why not? Why not? Why not? Though determined to find a way, she had no idea how to make his space dreams come true until she heard about Celestis Memorial Space Flights and signed him up for their inaugural rocket launch in April 1997.

Charles Chafer: 23:57

Our very first mission ended up being very high profile. We had the Star Trek creators, Gene Roddenberry's ashes, and we had the 60s icon, Timothy Leary's ashes on board. and when we did the launch we actually flew out of the canary islands and it caught the world's imagination we really had a lot of media coverage we were on the front page of the new york times cnn covered it live around the world and so being able to kind of get noticed early on really helped the process also. Since then, Celestis has sent the remains of more than 1,700 people into space. They call their customers astronauts. For so many people who have spent their lives looking at the stars and wondering what's out there, it's not only a thrilling way to go, but a dream come true and a spectacular celebration of life for those left behind. In a 2023 New York Times article that had interviewed people who had opted for what is sometimes called space burial, even though it's actually only a small portion of ashes or DNA that goes to space, a pharmacist named Kathleen is quoted as saying, I love new things. I love trying new things. To me, it doesn't really feel like an end. Another interviewee explained that they didn't want to end up underground further inside the planet when they died, that that seemed like the wrong direction to go. And they stated, I'm interested in looking into the unknown, going into the unknown. This is another adventure.

Lo Carmen: 25:58

This is CEO Charles Schaefer that we're talking with.

Charles Chafer: 26:03

We launch a symbolic portion. of cremated remains humans or pets or dna samples into space and we do that to four different destinations in space we have a suborbital service that flies to space and returns the individual capsules creating a flown keepsake we fly to earth orbit we fly to the moon and we also fly to deep space and service includes a three-day activity at the launch site where families from around the world converge and we conduct a number of activities including launch site tours memorial services and then of course ultimately witnessing and watching the launch of a loved one into space on a final journey

Lo Carmen: 26:58

sounds incredible how did you begin your involvement with it? Was it your concept?

Charles Chafer: 27:05

I traced the idea back to science fiction, at least the 1800s, which isn't surprising given that as you think about humans traveling into space, inevitably you think about, well, people are going to pass away. What do you do? And that was the source of some science fiction. But the idea really came to us in the mid 1980s from a group in Florida that had the idea. I was in the rocket business then, launching satellites and everything else. And this group came to us and said, we have this idea to create something space funerals and ultimately they weren't successful. But in the mid 1990s, I was looking for something that I thought would be interesting to do that would advance humanity into space and that would be a good business to be in. So a partner and I founded the company in 1994. I

Lo Carmen: 28:07

can't imagine at that time that there was very many alternative burial options was there?

Charles Chafer: 28:13

That's true. I think we were one of the very early of what is now a tsunami of alternative options out there. But we were almost even before the internet. I think we had probably one of the first e-commerce websites in history as well.

Lo Carmen: 28:32

Wow.

Charles Chafer: 28:33

So yes, we've seen well, all of the various alternatives that are growing rapidly now. And we just happened to get out in front of that trend.

Lo Carmen: 28:45

Was there resistance to the idea of people using cremated ashes to memorialize their loved ones to begin with?

Charles Chafer: 28:53

Some, yes. I think probably any new idea has people that are doubters. But I think at the time, the cremation rate in our country was only 13, 14 So there were a lot of people that thought cremation was bad, even at that point. When you get past that, then there were some level of religious objections, not a great amount, and then just other people going, I don't get it. And of course, we've never said our service is for everyone, but for every person that wondered, What are you doing? There were at least another person saying, that's the coolest thing I've ever heard of. And that's how I want to celebrate my loved one's life.

Lo Carmen: 29:39

Yeah. Do you have a lot of people that sign up themselves prior? Yeah.

Charles Chafer: 29:46

In the language of funeral service, it's called prearrangement. And we actually have offered that service where people make a decision. This is what I want. I want to take the burden off my family when I pass away. I want to make sure that it's done the way I want it to be done. And so they sign a contract with us and we have a trust account where we put the majority of the funds that they send us into a trust account. so that everybody knows when the time comes, the funds will be there to perform the service. And that's actually been growing fairly significantly in the last two or three years. I think, as we mentioned, now that there are several demographic factors, the cremation rate in this country is now, in most places, over 50%, and it will be... people predict 80% within a decade. So that's a trend. Then there's the trend of baby boomers and making decisions differently than say their parents. So the notion of, you know, bury me next to grandma and the family plot in the church cemetery, that's not as popular with people now as, hey, I want to do something that's meaningful to me. And I have that option. And that's the change is all of a sudden there are options to do things differently so you put all three of those things together it's I think quite predictable in hindsight obviously but we also saw it coming that the service would appeal to people I say it appeals to anybody that walks out on a starry night and looks up and says that's where I want to be I

Lo Carmen: 31:35

think it's also such a beautiful thing when kids look up to the sky all the time and go there's grandma It makes that very real.

Charles Chafer: 31:43

Yes, it does. I think that's a big motivation for people. Because, you know, funerals are for the living, after all. And so the fact that people gain comfort. And I, you know, our launch events are really pretty amazing. And if you've never been to one, it's hard to put into words. But I tell people you don't ever see as much cheering and high-fiving at a funeral as you do at one of our services. because there's a genuine thrill of, you know, mom's going to orbit kind of thing and we can all be there to wish her off, which you just don't get in the more traditional choices.

Lo Carmen: 32:23

No, it must change the focus so much from... I mean, obviously, there's still sadness, but it must add such a celebratory angle to it.

Charles Chafer: 32:32

Exactly. You know, we can't get rid of grief. Grief is still a part of what everybody goes through. But we bring a lot of joy and fulfillment to the ceremony. And that makes everybody feel good. And I think that's why people choose it.

Lo Carmen: 32:49

Yeah, that makes complete sense. Who were the early adopters? What kind of people? Was it people that were fascinated by science fiction and space?

Charles Chafer: 32:57

Yeah. The people that have always been interested in the space program. Same people that make the... Smithsonian Air and Space Museum here in America, the second most visited museum in the world. Certainly those folks were natural for airline pilots or airplane pilots. We all call each other space geeks because I'm one. There are the people that have followed Star Trek and science fiction and that all their lives. And that's a pretty big group also. And then there's just the folks I call the New Agers, which are just just the folks that say that, you know, that's where I belong.

Lo Carmen: 33:39

There's a connection between death and space in that they're both so unknowable and mysterious and they kind of go beautifully together, don't they?

Charles Chafer: 33:47

I think so, yeah. And, you know, there's the infinite frontier and the sort of opportunity to just be a part of something that's infinite that appeals to folks also.

Lo Carmen: 34:00

To become part of the cosmos.

Charles Chafer: 34:02

Right. It's very similar to in some ways to people that want to be scattered at sea it's the same sort of feeling of being part of something that's organic and larger than you and not necessarily being under the ground somewhere I think those are all elements that the folks that do choose our service I think that's pretty universally

Lo Carmen: 34:32

true a great sense of release and being at one with the universe.

Charles Chafer: 34:37

Exactly, yeah.

Lo Carmen: 35:09

Can people do it years after somebody's died with the ashes? Does that happen much?

Charles Chafer: 35:16

Oh, sure. In fact, when we first put our business plan together, we had built all of these assumptions that it would be white, male, aerospace people living on the coast. The first person that bought our service was a woman in Nebraska who had her father... in an urn for 10 years. And she heard about us and said that would just be perfect for dad. So he never knew that that was what was going to be, but it really appealed to his daughter. And 10 years later, he went to space.

Lo Carmen: 35:54

Is it something that you will do for yourself?

Charles Chafer: 35:56

Yeah, I fit all of our models. I've been interested in space my whole life. I've been in the space industry my whole life. I've definitely chosen cremation as my final disposition. And I can't imagine a more appropriate service, even if it wasn't my company. I'm sure I would seek it out and do it.

Lo Carmen: 36:20

How often do space flights happen? Do you have to plan, wait advance?

Charles Chafer: 36:25

We're what always fly is what's called a secondary payload and what that means is we are not the primary reason that anybody's doing a launch and so we kind of have to recognize our spot in line and we therefore have to have everything prepared and ready to go months six months, seven months, eight months in advance of the launch. And then once we've turned it over to the provider, be it a satellite or a launch vehicle, then we have to do a fair amount of preparation for the three-day events that we hold at the launch site. And of course, launches move around. And we don't dictate when the launch goes. It goes whether we're ready or not, or sometimes it goes after we're ready. If you're looking for a guaranteed time that this is going to launch into space you need to look elsewhere how does it work do you put the dna or the ashes in a small like test tube size capsule yeah yeah yeah it's pretty close to that so each person gets an individual what we call flight capsule and now we do have a service two can fly to get husband and wife want to fly together intermingle whatever we we offer that but typically it's in a capsule that ranges in size and people decide because we only launch a small portion of the ashes it's more memorialization than final disposition people decide if they want the what I would call a fat watch battery size ranging up to a lipstick container size and once they've selected that we'll engrave the name or names on that capsule seal it and then we actually aggregate, however many people are on that flight. And that's then turned over to whoever is doing what's called the integration. And that's the attachment of our capsules, either to a satellite or directly to a rocket. We do both. And then from there on, we have nothing to do with it. We're not allowed to touch the machinery. The head of the satellite company came out and said, we don't consider your loved ones as passengers, we consider them as crew. And the reason for that is because they use the weight of the whatever we provide to help balance the spacecraft. Spacecrafts have to spin and they have to be properly balanced. And so they often actually put extra weight on to make sure everything's balanced. In this case, our folks were serving the function of balancing the spacecraft and families love that because not only are their loved ones going but they're an integral part of a real mission

Lo Carmen: 39:23

there's nothing nicer than to be of use is there

Charles Chafer: 39:26

that's right

Lo Carmen: 39:27

Now, probably the most important things I've learned from exploring the wonderful world of things that you can do with cremains in these conversations with Jason Leach of And Vinyly and Charles Schaefer from Celestis Space Services is that death is for the living. There are ways to move the air in the room long after you're gone. Space really might be the place. and that the only way to go is to go your own way. Death Is Not The End was created, written, recorded and edited by me, your host, Lo Carmen, and produced by Black Tambourine Productions. Conversations have been edited for clarity and time. The Death Is Not The End theme music was written, recorded and performed by Peter Head. Thank you so much to Holiday Sidewinder and Nick Littlemore for permission to use their song Into the Universe from their album Face of God and to William Tyler for letting me use his instrumental version of Go Your Own Way, originally recorded by Fleetwood Mac. We also heard a song of mine, Put Another Record On, from the album Lovers Dream as Fighters, and that's my weird little bedroom version of Space Cowboy by Casey Musgraves, because I couldn't afford to use the real thing. I'll leave all the info from today's episode in the show notes, and you can find me online at lowcarmen.substack.com where I write about music, culture, life and death and all the juicy stuff that makes the world go round. And you are more than welcome to come join the conversation. If you enjoyed Death Is Not The End, please share it with someone or leave a review. It really helps spread the word. And I hope you'll join me next time for more explorations and discovery on Death Is Not The End.