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Space Burial
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Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done. -- James J. Ling
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done. -- James J. Ling
Special 'Delivery' Instructions (Score:5, Funny)
PS: Please aim at the section of space that in the 23rd century will be off limits to all spacefarers, in which resides the Genesis planet. Please make sure to also provide good embalming and a capsule capable of shielding body from cosmic rays.
Re:Special 'Delivery' Instructions (Score:3, Informative)
Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Interesting)
They call the service Ad Astra. I like the dobule meaning of the word "ad" in that name...
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Interesting)
Only in this case it's more like "Klingon want some Viagra?".
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Funny)
A) I'm coming home momma!
B) Please rectally probe the following people who bullied me in school...
C) Please view the accompanying transmitted picture
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:4, Funny)
I wish I hadn't used up all my mod points, that was +1 funny... anyway, who do I talk to about donating my body to science? Seriously, my wife wants to be buried with her family, and I figure science could use my body -- how better to study the effects of alcohol on the human body than to examine my dead body? :-)
I'll beat that price! (Score:5, Insightful)
For only $10,000 US (deposited in my Swiss bank account before your transistion to the next world), I will...
receive your ashes from the cremation facility,
and...
Give you a multi-colored ink-jet printed certificate that your ashes will be on the next space-shuttle flight and scattered into low-earth orbit. Where they will cause millions of tiny little twinkles that commemorate your life...
and...
Make sure that your ashes (in real life) don't make a big mess in the parking lot behind my apartment.
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:3, Funny)
And for even more kicks, you'll be happy to know this message came to you via a satellite in geostationary orbit.
Yes, the 600ms ping time does suck, but at least I can annoy people on IRC by saying, "GREETINGS FROM OUTER SPACE"!
Space Pollution (Score:3, Insightful)
or polluting the Sun, conjuring up images of canisters scattered across the solar surface.
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:5, Interesting)
Would be kinda cool to send the instructions to build youself out into the cosmos. I am sure one could calculate the probability of a significantly advanced live form to intercept your message and build a clone of you just for the heck of it.
Hmmm i think i smell a great plot for sci fi story.
Re:Broadcasting dead... (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly, I just read Second Genesis by Donald Moffitt, which is based on a not too dissimilar idea. (Pretty decent afternoon read, if you're into that kind of book.)
Take down a space station (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take down a space station (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Take down a space station (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.seds.org/pub/info/newsletters/spacev
NASA to Test Laser "Broom" to Clean Space Junk
NASA plans to test a laser system in 2003 that may help clear
low-Earth orbit of debris that could pose a risk to the shuttle and
space station.
New Scientist magazine reported in its current issue that a
shuttle flight in 2003 will test Project Orion, a groundbased laser
system that would act as a "broom", sweeping out small debris from
orbit.
During the mission the shuttle will release small instrumented
objects designed to simulate space debris. The objects will be
equipped with GPS receivers so that their positions can be tracked as
they are illuminated by a groundbased megawatt-power laser. The laser
will vaporize part of the object's surface, creating a small amount of
thrust that slows the object down and eventually causes it to reenter
the Earth's atmosphere.
If successful, the system could be used to clear out low-Earth
orbit of small pieces of orbital debris that, because of their high
velocities, can cause significant damage if they strike a spacecraft.
"With a laser system we could clear from orbit all the debris between
1 and 10 centimeters [0.4 to 4 inches] in size within two years," said
Jonathan Campbell, head of the Project Orion effort at NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center.
That size range is significant because debris of that size
poses the greatest risk. Shielding on spacecraft can protect them
from objects smaller than 1 cm (0.4 in.), while those larger than 10
cm (4 in.) across can be tracked from the ground and spacecraft moved
to avoid them. Between 1 and 10 cm, though, are objects too small to
be tracked from the ground and too large to be effectively shielded
against.
Campbell and others involved with Project Orion (first
described in SpaceViews in 1997) are optimistic that lasers can clear
low-Earth orbits effectively and at a relatively modest cost. "We now
know we can decelerate and de-orbit the debris with the types of laser
that are available to us," based on a series of recent tests on the
ground, he said.
A two-year effort to clear debris from orbit would cost about
$200 million, Campbell estimated. By comparison, the cost of a single
space shuttle mission has been estimated to be as much as a half-
billion dollars.
Re:Take down a space station (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Take down a space station (Score:3, Funny)
It's a lot cheaper than your plan, and I still get the added bonus of the fear-striking thing.
Re:Take down a space station (Score:3, Funny)
However, the radioactive eggs that I probably laid at the time could end up hatching and once again striking the fear into the hearts of the living.
I got it all worke
Re:Take down a space station (Score:5, Informative)
"A 1999 study estimated there are some 4 million pounds of space junk in low-Earth orbit, just one part of a celestial sea of roughly 110,000 objects larger than 1 centimeter -- each big enough to damage a satellite or space-based telescope."
Of them, "8,927 are man-made objects which are officially tracked."
Worrying about "space garbage"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: story (Score:5, Funny)
I know *exactly* how you feel.
I want you to burn in the Sun, too.
Re: story (Score:4, Interesting)
If you are pushed a hair off course, your remains will go into orbit around the sun, or be blown outward by the solar winds.
Even if you aim precisely at the sun, the ever increasing pressure of the solar discharge will tend to push you off course and away.
Just Drop Into the Sun from Sail Ship (Score:5, Interesting)
So don't push the body into the sun from orbit.
Do it from a solar sail craft that is hovering over the sun (from a point where light pressure is balanced between gravitational pull), and just drop the body in.
As far as I know, the idea belongs to Bob L. Forward [robertforward.com]. That's how one of the characters is "buried" at the end of his novel Flight of the Dragonfly [amazon.com] (which was later re-published in bloated form as Rocheworld; get the original).
Since the light sail craft was not in orbit, there was no forward component of motion. Thus, when released from the craft, the body was not in orbit either. The only force acting on the body was the gravitational pull of the star.
Re:Just Drop Into the Sun from Sail Ship (Score:4, Informative)
Yes and no (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, flying straight the sun is very difficult.
Yes, it is: to go into an orbit that will intersect the sun you have to kill nearly all your current velocity with respect to the sun. IIRC for the Earth that's about 25 miles per second (plus a bit extra to get you out of Earth's gravity well), which is more than three times as fast this "put your ashes in orbit" mission.
This is the part you just made up:
If you are pushed a hair off course, your remains will go into orbit around the sun, or be blown outward by the solar winds.
There is a reason why light-sail designs call for square miles of material thinner than paper: because unless you've got that much surface area to weight, neither sunlight nor solar wind will change your course very much.
Even if you aim precisely at the sun, the ever increasing pressure of the solar discharge will tend to push you off course and away.
That pressure will increase with the inverse square of your distance from the sun, as does the force of gravity pulling you towards the sun. If you were on course to begin with, you won't be blown off it, certainly not enough to miss a million mile wide target.
Re:Yes and no (Score:3, Informative)
If you travel at only one meter per second away from the Earth, gravity will smack you back into the Earth shortly thereafter, unless you're under constant acceleration (which requires extra deltaV, which I l
burn in hell (Score:5, Funny)
According to my ex-wife I'm gonna burn in hell when I die.
Re:burn in hell (Score:5, Funny)
Re:burn in hell (Score:5, Funny)
Only so much carbon... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Informative)
The amount of mass falling onto the earth from space is measured in the hundreds of tons per day.
Do the math.
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Funny)
The amount of mass falling onto the earth from space is measured in the hundreds of tons per day.
What sorts of stuff are we launching and what sorts of stuff is falling onto the Earth? Maybe we're trading titanium for sand. Not that I think we have to worry - just a thought.
Still, maybe launching yourself into space could prevent you from being brought back to life someday. Then again, maybe you'd be brought back to life to fight some losing battle against aliens...
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Funny)
Say a group of zombies, or ninjas, or a killer virus that turned people into zombie ninjas, caused a good 5 billion people to die. Sure, these guys would have a booming business, but at 70Kg for each corpse, that's 350,000,000,000Kg (350 billion), which would require a millennium to replaces with space dust.
And besides, if you're ejecting all those kadavas into space, you're just asking the aforementioned virus to evolve, giving rise to a hideous race of mutant space zombie-ninjas.
Zombies need to eat too.
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Informative)
I could sit here half the night listing reasons why launching dead granny dust into space is a pretty daft idea, but worries about unbalancing the earth's orbit or running out of carbon wouldn't be among them.
If you took all the people in the world and packed them into a box, like sardines, without cremating, that box would have to be about 3/4 mile per side.
That's it. All of humanity. All of humanity's mass. Poof it out into space and the earth wouldn't so much as bobble, or care.
KFG
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:3, Informative)
That doesn't sound right, so I've done my own quick calculation in metric. I'm assuming that the average size of a person is 50cm by 30cm (~1 foot 8 inches by 1 foot), that there are about 6 billion people, and that all of them are standing up in the box. These assumptions should be near enough, and make it easy to do without a calculator.
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:3, Informative)
The calculations are correct. Amazing, eh?
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, how's life down there in Flatland? *sticks fingers through wrmrxxx's plane to mess with him*
In my universe, people are three dimensional; it's like having another degree of freedom!
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe so, but can they all stand on Zanzibar?
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Informative)
1 person is 10 cubic feet of space (5x2x1)
there are 6E9 people in the world
10 cuft/person x 6E9 people = 6E10 cuft
a box, 3/4 mile cube, holds 3960x3960x3960 cuft...
that comes to 6.2E10 cubic feet.
or, in laymans terms, enough.
Original poster was correct, by your own figures. By his, he's at worst rather generous with the box.
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the mass on earth question, I wouldn't think the mass we've shot into space is anything to worry about. The earth is big and we aren't to the point where we can cheaply send tons of stuff into space. Even if everyone on earth were to be 'buried' there, it wouldn't cause any significant impact.
As an aside, what's with calling it a space burial anyway? I guess it's better on the marketing than just saying they'll shoot your lifeless body into nothingness where you'll cook on one side and freeze on the other.
Re:Only so much carbon... (Score:5, Informative)
mass of Earth:
5.9742 x 10^24 kilograms. That's
5,974,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.
mass of average person:
about 100 kilograms
number of bodies needed to change the Earth's weight by 1%:
597,420,000,000,000,000,000
Population of Earth:
about 6,000,000,000
Weight of Apollo 11:
about 30,000 kg
Number of Apollo 11's needed to change Earth's weight by 1%
1,991,400,000,000,000,000
In conclusion, the Earth is really big.
The perfect gift (Score:5, Funny)
Old news - they handled my brother (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to burn in the Sun (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
a bit cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:a bit cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to burn in the Sun? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You want to burn in the Sun? (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. Once the sun goes red-giant, its radius will be far larger than the orbital distance of this little planet. So everyone's bones will eventually wind up toast.
Worried about global warming? Now that's global warming.
Re:You want to burn in the Sun? (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting Terminology (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't remember anyone saying Gene Roddenberry was buried in space....I wonder if he was the first person to voluntarily have his remains ejected into space.
I bet not many people will want to... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I bet not many people will want to... (Score:4, Funny)
There were already remains in orbit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:There were already remains in orbit (Score:5, Informative)
Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
This is something which most americans need to ponder seriously. Especially when you consider voting a trigger-happy president such as Bush into office.
If any other country committed such an atrocity against another as the United States did to Japan, we would have World War 3 (it DID cause the cold war, but that's another story). Okay... Japan unsuccessfully attacked a naval base. We nuked two cities without warning, killing thousands.
Not exactly something that deserves +5 fun
Your easy answer is, alas, too easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
More accurately, it kept the Cold War from becoming hot. The Cold War was going to happen regardless of whether we dropped a nuke or Martha Stewart on Hiroshima. The US and the USSR were (are) both ideologically expansionist powers, in that each wanted to see its ideology adopted by the rest of the world. When two expansionist powers come into conflict, there's going to be a cold war and most likely followed by a very hot one. Unless, of course, both sides know that a hot war would be a literal hell on earth, thus giving both sides a strong incentive to not start a hot war.
Did we come close to nuclear war in the Cuba embargo? Damn straight. Why didn't we exchange nukes? Because both sides were reluctant to.
For the first time in the history of the world, we've invented a weapon which has not been used for over fifty years. That has never happened before.
I actually rather like the Bomb. It's a simple, one-question choice: are we as human beings morally developed enough to be allowed to continue existing?
It's a one-question exam, scored pass or fail. So far, humanity has made the right choice. I think that's rather hopeful, myself.
If any other country committed such an atrocity against another as the United States did to Japan, we would have World War 3
I see. So we could either kill 250,000 Japanese (and several thousand Korean slave workers who were in Hiroshima when the Bomb hit, and several thousands of other nationalities, too) in two attacks so terrible, so catastrophic, so Wrath of God, that the Japanese surrendered... or we could go forward with Operation Olympic and kill millions of Japanese and millions of Americans.
After the Nagasaki bomb hit, the Emperor was willing to surrender. Do you know what his aides' response to this was? They tried to murder him so that he wouldn't be able to surrender; and without an Emperor who could sign a surrender, it would've condemned Japan to decades of warfare. That's how hardcore, how serious, the Japanese generals, warmongers and militarists were: they wanted the world to end.
By nuking two cities, the United States forced a surrender.
Was dropping The Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime? I don't know. I genuinely don't know. No matter what arguments you make for it being a war crime, there are powerful and compelling arguments that not dropping The Bomb would have been a greater crime. And no matter what arguments you make in defense of The Bomb, you cannot argue away 250,000-plus people wiped out in an instant, their shadows etched onto the sides of buildings.
I have no answers. I only appreciate the spectacular difficulty of the question. That you have found easy answers strongly suggests to me that you have no appreciation of the question.
In the end, humanity is advanced more by people who have no answers than by people who have answers without understanding the questions.
Re:Your easy answer is, alas, too easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the 19th century civilian population centers and industry had become such an important part of a nation's ability to wage war that they were viewed as valid military targets. Some people use this belief as an argument that nuking those cities was okay. That still leaves the question of why we could not have selected a pure military site to nuke - the damage caused would not have been as great, but Japan would have been able to see what sort o
Re:Your easy answer is, alas, too easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Under the Geneva Accords, a nation is obligated to conduct war in such a manner as to minimize the depradations, casualties, loss of life and property damage to non-military targets. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were apocalyptic attacks, yes. Olympic would have been worse.
So by that metric--if we had a
I'd go ahead and outlaw this guys (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's to a very fast bankruptcy for these guys.
A quarter ounce or less... (Score:5, Informative)
Other services mention only a "symbolic portion", and its questionable whether they even exist. The only non-"Earthview" activity was purchasing a capsule on a NASA mission that was headed to the moon. I presume their deep space service would be offered the same way...
Bad idea (Score:5, Funny)
Immortality (Score:4, Interesting)
on a serious note... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, many of these coffin launches are going to get sucked up into solar gravity wells and burn up, but some are going to get caught in orbits around low-atmosphere bodies or other survivable situations.
My thinking behind this? the universe isnt *that* old compared to its predicted total lifespan; humankind may indeed be one of the 'first races'. By the time enough life-bearing planets produce that cycle, humanity may already be several hundred million years extinct. But putting our 'relics' (ie our corpses) out into the void, where they may survive fairly intact for far longer (assuming they have the sense to vacuum-pack our corpsicles) we stand a fair chance that something out in the distant future is going to find one of these human relics, and if they havent watched enough sci-fi, probably resurrect the human race from our DNA
[seriously, blasting your corpse into space probably has more value to it than any current cyrogenics program, as far as the odds of you being resurrected go, the cost of maintenance,[hopefuly none] and value to the human race (lets face it, most of the people going into alcor drums we probably dont want back!)
Certainly, I'd like to do this, on the condition that the launch params were sufficient to give me a good shot at escaping the sol system limits and not returning to ground as space-trash on one of our neighboring planets.
These guys will PAY for your space burial! (Score:5, Funny)
The decay bateria are hungry! (Score:5, Interesting)
Denser elements come into being for millions of years, until the very oldest stars first burnt out, then re-ignited by burning heavy elements, until finally bursting in novas and flinging heavier elements out into the universe.
After many many such novas, eventually enough of these heavier elements were produced to coalesce and form our sun and its planets. One of the heavier elements -- carbon, some 12 times heavier than fundamental element hydrogen -- conveniently arranges itself into the benzene rings of six atoms that are the scaffold for all Earthly life. It is because of this that Carl Sagan said that we were all made of star-stuff.
And after all that work of billions of years to collect heavy elements here on Earth, you want to just throw away all that by shooting it into space?
Learn to recycle, fer cryin' out loud!
Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats wrong with good ol underground? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe the geosync orbit will be a belt of zombies visible from the ground, from which dead bodies will occasionally whack the windows of the next space station.
I'd much rather be thrown into the atmosphere, on the night side so people would see a shooting star and make a wish. Hopefully the shooting star will not reach the ground, now that would be messy.
Rip Off (Score:5, Interesting)
Another rip off is the name a star after you, listed at the bottom as part of the cheaper option, I have researched this name a star after you after hearing it on the radio and thinking about naming one after my girlfriend (she is into cosmology) but after researching it I discovered that all the people do is write the name down in a book that the company has, but the company has no right to name the star (only the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has the right to officially name celestial objects), so all you get is an expensive piece of paper ($50 and up) and here they are charging $300 bucks for that a digital broadcast!!
Tom: No, actually, Helping Children Through Research And Development is the acronym, Mike. It stands for: Hi, Everyone, Let's Pitch In 'N' Get Cracking Here In Louisiana Doing Right, Eh? Now Then, Hateful, Rich, Overbearing Ugly Guys Hurt Royally Every Time Someone Eats A Radish, Carrot, Hors d'oeuvre, And Never Does Dishes. Eventually, Victor Eats Lunch Over Peoria Mit Ein Neuesberger Tod. .
Burn on the Sun? (Score:5, Informative)
Bah! (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think you understand the scale of things. Space...is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. [bbc.co.uk]
How do you decompose in space? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry for the gruesome question, but I'm curious.
Re:How do you decompose in space? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the decompression would get you before you had the change to find out. You bones would hold up and maybe some of your muscles. Your other organs wouldn't be so lucky though.
But hey, at least that part of you that somehow stays together will stay intact for the long haul. The cold of space would freeze it pretty quickly.
-B
Reminds me of a twilight zone episode... (Score:3, Interesting)
Astronauts land on a planet with lots of scenes from various periods of history but everyone there seem to be frozen in time, it's actually a great big cemetery planet where the rich have their bodies sent to live out eternity.
Not ambitious enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe burning in the sun wouldn't be so bad. There was another novel whose author and title I can't recall at the moment, in which one of the characters was a human transformed into an entity that could in fact survive in the sun. She discovered that there were intelligent creatures living there that were taking actions apparently designed to shorten the sun's life.
Gene Roddenberry was already 'buried' in space (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a old CNN article on it here [cnn.com]
Life on other planets?... (Score:5, Funny)
I prefer this Sweedish method (Score:5, Interesting)
Swedes offer freeze-dry burials
The environmentally-conscientious could soon ensure they don't end up polluting the earth after they die, thanks to a company in Sweden.
Concerns about the environmental impact of embalming fluids or cremation have led Promessa Organic to come up with a chilling alternative.
Their method involves freeze-drying the corpse in liquid nitrogen.
Sound vibrations then shatter the brittle remains into a powder that can be "returned to the ecological cycle".
Biologist and head of Promessa Organic Susanne Wiigh-Maesak said she hoped to promote environmental and existential awareness.
"Our ecological burial reduces environmental impact on some of our most important resources; our water, air and soil," she explains on her company website.
"At the same time it provides us with deeper insights regarding the ecological cycle, and greater understanding of and respect for life on earth."
Compost
After the freezing process, the odourless powdery remains are laid in a coffin made of corn starch and buried in a shallow grave.
Ms Wiigh-Maesak says the soil "turns the coffin and its contents into compost in about six months" which means relatives can then plant a bush or tree on the spot.
The method is based upon preserving the body in a biological form after death, while avoiding harmful embalming fluid
Susanne Wiigh-Maesak,
Promessa Organic
"The compost formed can then be taken up by the plant... The plant stands as a symbol of the person, and we understand where the body went," she said.
Ms Wiigh-Maesak says she would very much like to become a white rhododendron.
The company has applied for a patent on her method in 35 countries.
Ms Wiigh-Maesak said the authorities in Joenkoeping, 328 km (204 miles) south-west of Stockholm, were ready to start operating its first freeze-drying facility in the next couple of years.
The head of cemetery administration in Joenkoeping said younger people were keen on the idea as "green burials" are becoming popular in Sweden.
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Insightful)
Do mourners get to sprinkle a bit of space on the "grave"?
Howstuffworks Entry on Space Burials (Score:3, Insightful)
"For the Encounter 2001 mission, Celestis will place cremated remains into personalized flight capsules that can hold approximately one-quarter ounce (7 grams) of ashes. They will then load these capsules into a canister attached to the upper stage engine. The Encounter 2001 will initially travel into Earth's geosynchronous transfer orbit, an orbit primarily used by communications satellites. When the craft reaches the optimal point in its orbit, ground control will send a command to fire the spacecraft's solid-fuel rocket motor, propelling the spacecraft towards Jupiter. About two years later, the tiny spaceship will fly by Jupiter, using the planet's gravity to propel itself outside the solar system."
Given that a typical funeral costs around $7,000 [funeralplan.com], the price doesn't seem too steep. Save a little more, skip the visitation, and get yourself a rocket.
-Oobob
Visible from Earth (Score:3, Funny)
Yes!
Hey, why not be immortalized before your time? (Score:3, Funny)
Trash in space (Score:3, Interesting)
If anybody is interested in an anime which deals with this issue, I HIGHLY recommend Planet ES [animenfo.com]. It deals with a salaryman in space who works as a space debris collector (futuristic garbageman). Apparently space trash is a HUGE problem in the series, and even a tiny screw floating out in space can kill if its moving fast enough. Very interesting. I wonder how closely our future will mirror this.
wait a few years (Score:5, Funny)
You can do that for free, just wait about 5 billion years.
Mars landing (Score:5, Interesting)
rock on
Panspermia problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
$50K gets you cryonics & possible future revi (Score:3, Funny)
And if revived in the distant future, you can ride in a spaceship and look out the window at all those 100K space caskets roaming around space.
Myself, I prefer a chance at life to a certain death....
Re:Cemeteries are landfills (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cemeteries are landfills (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cemeteries are landfills (Score:5, Insightful)
Reducing him and many others to the equal of garbage is disrespectful to say the least.
How about composting? (Score:3, Insightful)
And; No, put in a pine box after being pickeled is not the same!
Re:Cemeteries are landfills (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cemeteries are landfills (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cemeteries are landfills (Score:4, Interesting)
The people are not worthless. But their bodies are. You aren't (normally) attached to the bodies of your friends and families, you're attached to their minds and souls. No matter what you do with the body, whether you burn it or bury it, the soul is not around any more. The body is just a bit of decomposing matter. Ecologically speaking, it's garbage.
I would rather have my ashes scattered in a place that I loved, so that my family could remember me every time they were there, and so that my body would go back into the nature environment and nurture new life. I'd rather go out in a burst of flame than slowly be eaten away by worms over the decades.
Many cultures manage to do quite well without cemetaries - Japan has a 97% cremation rate. While I respect the right of people to dispose of their bodies as they see fit, I believe that the US would be better off if we did the same.