William Shatner has invested in a wild new project (Picture: Stewart Cook/Shutterstock)
William Shatner wants to send your DNA to the moon. No, really.
The Star Trek legend, 92, has actually debuted a new service that will let paying customers send their DNA to the moon for just the small price of $150,000 (£114,582).
Speaking to a small crowd assembled outside Hollywood’s Chinese Theatre this week, Shatner said: ‘I’m going to die, and I’m going to disappear. What can I do?
‘Here we have the possibility of a type of immortality.’
Shatner – who played Captain James T. Kirk in the 1960s series – has become the first paying customer to splash out on the unique service in a bid for immortality.
He’s also an investor and brand ambassador for the Houston-based startup Space Crystals.
The actor wants to be immortalised after he dies (Picture: Stewart Cook/Shutterstock)
It’s said that, through the company’s Immortalise Me program, people can have their DNA grown into a pair of crystals on board a spaceship.
While one crystal is given back to the individual, the second is sent to the moon on board a lunar time capsule.
The service is set to launch (pardon the pun) next year.
In case you’re considering it and wondering what is included in the $150k, you are sent a DNA kit to submit a strand of hair.
The fee also covers the 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.
Company founder Kevin Heath said: ‘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.’
So, would you do it?
You can send your DNA to the moon for the small price of $150,000 (Picture: Stewart Cook/Shutterstock)
Customers are given a crystal to keep (Picture: Stewart Cook/Shutterstock)
This is far from the first time Shatner has expressed his passion for all things intergalactic.
In 2021, he became the oldest person ever to travel into space at the age of 90.
Overwhelmed with emotion after landing back on Earth, he described it as ‘the most profound experience.’
However, one year after his historic flight, the actor admitted he had been left filled with grief, an ‘overwhelming sadness’, and a newfound appreciation for the beauty of Earth.
It’s likely that the novice astronaut experienced the ‘overview effect’, a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space.
‘My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral,’ an excerpt from his book Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, published by Variety, read.
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‘I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses … but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold … all I saw was death,’ Shatner wrote.
Shatner blasted off from Texas in a Blue Origin rocket in October last year, where he, along with others on board, experienced zero gravity and saw the planet from an altitude of around 350,000ft.
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‘Here we have the possibility of a type of immortality.’
