If you’re rich enough, the Ganga may soon become passé. The Moon Express, a company co-founded by Indian-American Naveen Jain, has been granted a license by the US government to land vessels on the moon. Part of the commercial vessels’ cargo will be the ashes of those willing and able to pay the three million dollar per kilo fee. People can now literally look down from heaven on their loved ones after they have passed on. Moon Express is the first private company to be given a license of this kind, and its morbidity aside, it may spell the beginning of a new impetus for space travel.
The first “space race” was a Cold War era phenomenon, pushed in large part by the strategic concerns of the US and the Soviet Union. For both superpowers, at least initially, space exploration was less about scientific curiosity and the desire for exploration and more a quest for military and ideological superiority over their rivals. With the demilitarisation of space and the end of the Cold War, the rationale for spending huge amounts of public money on NASA and Roscosmos (Russia’s space agency) dwindled for some time. Recently, though, there has been a renewed interest in space exploration, and it presents commercial opportunities for those willing to take them.
