LOS ANGELES — “Star Trek” legend William Shatner is hoping others will join him to boldly go where no man has gone before. On Friday, the actor best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the iconic 1960s television series debuted a new service that will let paying customers send their DNA to the moon.
“I’m going to die, and I’m going to disappear. What can I do?” the 92-year-old told a small crowd assembled outside Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre. “Here we have the possibility of a type of immortality.”
Shatner is the first paying customer for the service as well as an investor and brand ambassador for the Houston-based startup Space Crystals. Through the company’s Immortalize Me program, individuals can have their DNA grown into a pair of crystals on board a spaceship. One crystal is given to the customer. The other is sent to the moon on board a lunar time capsule. Launching next year, the service costs $150,000.
The fee includes a DNA kit to submit a strand of hair, processing of the DNA in a crystalline solution, the crystalline solution’s flight to the International Space Station and the transport of the crystal to the moon, where it stays attached to the lunar lander.
“Our clients can hold their keepsake crystal in their hand, look up in the night sky and know a part of themselves is there, tied together through space and time in what we call the crystal connection,” company founder Kevin Heath said.
Heath founded the company in 2021, after spending two years in the aerospace industry. He worked on the Virgin Galactic Spaceship One program and the Dream Chaser Space Plane that plans to carry people to the International Space Station next year.
Heath said he first came up with the idea for Space Crystals a few years ago, when he was visiting Ludwig van Beethoven’s grave in Austria and noticed it was constantly being cleaned and maintained but was still deteriorating.
“That got me thinking: no matter what you build on Earth, it’s finite,” he said. “Everything will eventually be destroyed by nature or humans. Then I remembered the picture of the footprint of Neil Armstrong on the moon. Those footprints will be there forever.”
Combining that experience with inspiration from the “Jurassic Park” film franchise, where mosquito DNA was extracted from amber, “the idea for Space Crystals was born,” he said at an event that began with a medley of space-themed songs, including Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” David Bowie’s “Major Tom” and the Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic.”
The synthetic amethysts, as Heath calls them, are different from synthetic crystals grown on Earth which are virtually indistinguishable from one another. A crystal grown in zero gravity is more similar to a snowflake, the company said. No two are alike.
As out of this world as the idea seems, Heath has more than Hollywood star power on his side. He flew a demonstration mission on the International Space Station last year to test the process and has arranged payload space on the first lunar lander mission in 2024.
NASA Astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who has spent almost 200 days in orbit on the ISS, heads Space Crystals’ science and engineering program. Retired U.S. Navy Commander Vice Admiral Wally Massenburg is also part of the team, serving as an adviser and investor.
“These are extraordinary people with a great history of provenance,” Shatner said, adding that it was because of the teams’ previous accomplishments and the romance of the Space Crystals idea that he joined the company.
Space Crystals is different from the many space burial companies that have launched in recent years to send cremains to the heavens, including "Star Trek" creator Gene Rodenberry, who did so in 1992, and the actor who played Scotty, James Doohan, in 2012.
Only one person has ever had their ashes buried on the moon — geologist Gene Shoemaker. Just 25 humans have ever visited the moon — the last time being in 1972.
“I’m gonna put your DNA on the moon. It’s crazy,” Shatner said. “You will put your DNA in the capsule. That capsule will go to the moon and stay there alongside Neil Armstrong’s footsteps.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Gene Shoemaker's profession. The error has been corrected. (July 19, 2023)