The Navajo Nation is trying to ground the first commercial burials in space, insisting that the plan to memorialize humans on the moon will turn a place sacred to native religions into a “waste site.”
The Biden administration stepped in Friday to defuse the brewing star war, CNN reported, calling a hasty White House meeting ahead of the scheduled Monday launch of a rocket set to send the remains of George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and a constellation of “Star Trek” idols into space.
“The moon holds a sacred place in Navajo cosmology,” said Navajo president Buu Nygren.
“The suggestion of transforming it into a resting place for human remains is deeply disturbing and unacceptable to our people.”
“We’re turning the moon into a graveyard and we’re turning it into a waste site,” said Justin Ahasteen of the Navajos’ Washington office.
The two-stage Vulcan Centaur rocket has been packed with the remains of 333 people, including the late “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife, recurring cast member Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, several fellow USS Enterprise actors, and others whose families paid for the privilege.
Hair samples from three US presidents — Washington, JFK, and Dwight D. Eisenhower — are also aboard, courtesy of Celestis, a privately owned space burial company.
“We reject the assertion that our memorial spaceflight mission desecrates the moon,” said Celestis CEO Charles Chafer.
“Our memorial on the moon is handled with care and reverence … No one, and no religion, owns the moon.”
A 6-foot-tall, 8-foot-wide Peregrine Lunar Lander will drop 62 sets of human remains, packed separately in titanium capsules, on the moon’s surface.
The rest will continue into deep space to orbit around the sun.
But the native objections could short-circuit the mission, which has already been beset by delays.
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