Crownsville woman to send her deceased husband’s ashes to space with remains of Star Trek legends

A Crownsville woman will help fulfill her late husband’s dream Monday when she sends his ashes to space alongside the remains of his most beloved role models: the cast and creators of “Star Trek.”

Lt. Col. William “Bill” Jefferson Shaw will be one of more than 260 people, from actors to astronauts to presidents, whose remains or DNA will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida atop a Vulcan rocket and orbit the sun indefinitely, becoming part of the largest outpost of human material in deep space.

Shaw dreamed of being an astronaut from a young age, but unlike many kids who fantasize about touching the stars, he took the steps to achieve it. He was accepted to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and served in the Air Force for 23 years. However, he was rejected by NASA’s astronaut program because, at the time, NASA was not accepting applicants without 20/20 vision and Shaw wore glasses, said his wife, Oren Whyche-Shaw. During his career, he served with the Strategic Air Command and at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, flying missions all over the world.

In May 2017, Shaw, 60, died unexpectedly of complications relating to gastrointestinal issues.

Two years later, in 2019, Whyche-Shaw first sent his ashes to space with the Houston-based company Celestis. The company packages deceased peoples’ remains and living peoples’ DNA and partners with space travel companies to carry them into orbit.

“When he died, it was like, ‘You’re going to get to space. I’m going to make sure,’” Whyche-Shaw said, adding that if he knew where his ashes had gone, “He would be tickled.”

She was excited to have a way to honor his wish and thought that would be his only trip to space, but then a new opportunity through Celestis arose. It would be a “Star Trek”-focused launch including remains from Gene Roddenberry, the series creator, and cast members Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Nyota Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy), and James Doohan (Montgomery “Scotty” Scott).

“We are — were — sort of hardcore Trekkies,” Whyche-Shaw said, referring to the name given to devoted fans of the groundbreaking TV series.

The first trip was for Bill. “This one will be for us,” said Whyche-Shaw, whose DNA will be onboard alongside her husband’s.

“I thought this would be great, for the two of us to be in the universe, basically, forever,” she said.

And she really means forever. This trip, the company’s first-ever deep space Voyager mission, is never coming back.

While it will be Celestis’ 20th memorial space flight, according to company spokesperson Pazia Schonfeld, it will be its first time sending human samples to deep space — 330 million kilometers out in the solar system.

The genesis of this mission can be traced to 1997 and the company’s first memorial launch, when it sent the ashes of “Star Trek” creator Roddenberry out to space, said Colby Youngblood, president of Celestis. The showrunner’s wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who also had roles on “Star Trek,” requested that Celestis send her and her husband’s ashes together to deep space after she died. The company knew that could soon become possible for them and agreed. She died in 2008.

The mission will also include pieces of hair from former presidents George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy as well as two NASA astronauts who never got to go to space. Sending a loved one on this flight costs around $13,000, Youngblood said.

“There’s so many people out there who want to be an astronaut, who want to come to space but, realistically, it’s a very tiny fraction of people who get to do that,” he said. “But if we can provide something else, like the ability to send your ashes or your DNA or a song file or something out into space, it’s meaningful.”

The DNA is extracted from a cheek swab, imprinted onto a powder at a lab and placed in a capsule, he said.

The new Vulcan rocket being used for this flight, which is owned by United Launch Alliance, will ideally become one of the government contractor’s main launch vehicles following Monday’s lift-off.

“It’s the original, inaugural launch of what’s going to be their workhorse rocket for the U.S. government,” Youngblood said.

United Launch Alliance did not respond to a request for comment.

Whyche-Shaw said that she and her husband loved thinking about the vastness of space and realizing how small we are by comparison.

“It’s putting humanity in perspective. We take ourselves so seriously, but we are even smaller than the small blue dot of Carl Sagan,” she said. “The universe is enormous, beyond our comprehension to understand how big it is. We should be humble, try to recognize that the things we scream and fight over are insignificant in the scheme of life.”

In her career at the U.S. Agency for International Development, she and colleagues used information collected from space, including data on disease patterns, agriculture and animal poaching, to help those in need.

The couple, who moved to Crownsville in the early 2000s, first got together when Shaw was stationed at Fort Meade with the Air Force before retiring from the military and working as a civilian in intelligence for the National Security Agency.

After they got married, Shaw spotted a certificate in his wife’s suitcase for the “Star Trek”-inspired Klingon Academy and knew he’d chosen correctly. Soon after, they renewed their vows on the Enterprise ship in Las Vegas with a witness dressed as the fictional species from the show.

On Monday, Whyche-Shaw will head to the launch site in Florida and watch her husband boldly go where no man has gone before with a little piece of her by his side.