Send your ashes into orbit on an Elon Musk rocket as an alternative to a traditional memorial

Dropping ashes into a volcano, sprinkling them around the world and even blasting them into space are just some of the new ways Aussies are choosing to pay tribute to their loved ones.

Blasting your loved one’s ashes into space sounds out of this world but unconventional farewells are on the rise.

Dropping your remains into a volcano, sprinkling them in every country you have visited or simply scattering them from a light plane are just some of the requests funeral operator Bare has organised for clients.

“We tend to find that some of the more out-of-the-box requests come from those pre-planning their own farewells,” said Bare co-founder Sam McConkey. “Our favourite of late was an individual who had prepaid their own cremation and has actually arranged to have their ashes dropped into a volcano.”

From this month Bare, along with New Zealand start-up Stardust ME, will give Aussies the chance to send a portion of their ashes into orbit on board an Elon Musk SpaceX rocket travelling at 20,000km an hour.

Staring at $3000, it is a lot cheaper than the price of a seat on a space flight which start at about half a million dollars.

“For some a traditional funeral is perfect, for others they may want to be remembered in the stars,” Mr McConkey said. “It’s important to us that we … support both ends of this scale, as well as everything in between.”

Bare co-founders Cale Donovan and Sam McConkey started the business to disrupt Australia's funeral industry and are now offering to send your ashes into orbit. Picture: Supplied.

McConkey and Bare co-founder Cale Donovan are not your traditional funeral directors. With backgrounds in a range of industries from farming to finance, the pair decided it was time to disrupt the $1.7 billion Australian funeral market after their own personal sagas.

“We’ve been friends for years, and after each of us dealt with hard losses of our own and experienced the sheer cost and complexity of funerals first hand we just knew something had to change,” McConkey said.

The StardustME venture will give people a chance to put a small amount of ashes into a memorial token which is loaded onto the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Families can track the orbit of their loved one as it journeys through the stars for five years before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere as a “shooting star”.

Stu Potter, StardustME Managing Director said space memorials have been around for a while in the United States but are typically very expensive.

This option enables you to send a portion of ashes in a token for $3000 or an engraved token for $300.

Originally published as Send your ashes into orbit on an Elon Musk rocket as an alternative to a traditional memorial