The Strangest Requests Left In Celebrity Wills

March 2024 · 2 minute read

The Final Frontier, indeed. In April 1997, Texas-based company Celestis proudly trumpeted the first "public memorial spaceflight service ever conducted." A veritable Who's Who was aboard this Founders Flight, and they were all quite dead. According to Motherboard, the bounty of fabulous dead people included bits and pieces of Timothy Leary, space physicist Gerard O'Neill, and, as The New York Times reported, "fragments of Gene Roddenberry," the celebrated creator of Star Trek. 

According to Forbes, Roddenberry's last will and testament made it clear he wanted his ashes traveled "where no man has gone before," and he clearly wasn't just whistling Dixie. According to Newsweek, this was actually Roddenberry's second posthumous visit to space: NASA Astronaut James Weatherbee reportedly carried some of Roddenberry's ashes with him aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in October 1992 — about a year after Roddenberry's death in October 1991.

If the thought of Roddenberry's ashes floating forever in space fills you with implacable sadness, we have additional news that will stir your spirits. According to Space, the ashes of Roddenberry's wife, actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who passed away at age 74 on Dec. 18, 2008, were scheduled to be shot into the galaxy in 2009 to keep him company. 

Eugene Roddenberry, Jr., son of Gene and Majel, said the late couple would "carry their spirits, their memories, and the message of their life's work into the cosmos." In 1996, Majel herself told CNN: "It's somewhere to be a little celestial, perhaps, to find your place out there in the stars."  Well, we sincerely hope they did.

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