As launch costs fall semi-permanent internment in orbit becomes more attractive. IMO the biggest thing preventing this is concerns about space garbage. Addressing these concerns would be as easy as designating an orbit for human remains. This international agreement would do so. Something beyond LEO would be best, I think, to improve the permanence of the orbit. It should be different from the satellite graveyard to allow less complicated harvesting of that orbit when the time comes.-- Voice, Aug 29 2021 Space burial company https://www.celestis.com/Unfortunately they don't do complete remains [Voice, Aug 29 2021] A mole of moles https://what-if.xkcd.com/4/What happens if you put lots of moles together. [Frankx, Sep 03 2021] Maybe it should be a designated solar orbit, although one that doesn't intersect Earth's gravity well would be much more expensive.-- Voice, Aug 29 2021 Honestly, this seems like a sacrificial offering to the space gods. And for that reason [+].-- 4and20, Aug 29 2021 Why stick to orbit?
Why use the whole body?
Why burn it first?
How about just your hair follicles (or any minute amount of you) sent on an inter solar voyage on a laser propelled micro-probe to the exoplanet (or planets) of your choice?
Advertise it as your chance for your genetic heritage to colonise the stars.
'Affordable personal panspermia for you!'
Don't worry about the fact it all gets vaporised on entry, any DNA will degrade long b4 arrival or that a little bit of dead flesh can't really propagate its organisms DNA in any way.
Just because it doesn't work won't stop them, people pay others with no title or legal claim to them to name stars, they'll buy this too :)-- Skewed, Aug 29 2021 Ah, I missed a bit I see.
'Why burn it first?'
[Carefully inserts after second Why]-- Skewed, Aug 29 2021 Well now you're just splitting hairs...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 29 2021 I'd like mine donated to the Kobali.-- Skewed, Aug 29 2021 Graves are spreadin' 'round, in that Nexus found, They're getting stacked inside Lagrange. You know what I'm croakin' about... Just let me know if your corpse should go, To that tomb out on Lagrange.
They got a lot of nice ghouls, uhg.
Have mercy.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Aug 29 2021 Charge it to the new parents, I'm sure they'll be delighted to pay.
After all, they've never met me ;)-- Skewed, Aug 30 2021 There's a HALO joke in there, maybe-- not_morrison_rm, Aug 30 2021 I want mine on mars, without cremation or even embalming. If enough people join me we'll create an ecosystem up there of earth bacteria, mold, lichen, and worms. I bet all it would take is a pile of ten million warm corpses to definitely transfer life to mars. Whereas a pile in space would have to be absolutely immense -- big enough to have a gravity field that separates the lower bodies into their separate components and then melts the iron -- to host life.-- Voice, Aug 30 2021 + as long as I am written up in the Orbit Obit.-- xandram, Aug 30 2021 //a pile in space//Been spending time on WBSE have you? Feasibility of life on a Flesh Planet? :)-- Skewed, Aug 30 2021 I could see David Bowie biting on this.-- RayfordSteele, Aug 30 2021 If you really want to to be "permanent", you need to be far enough out to really avoid atmosphere, and in an area that isn't needed for commercial development or travel. I'd recommend the outer edge of the inner van Allen belt. Also makes it more difficult for future grave robbers when the grave goods glow in the dark.-- MechE, Aug 30 2021 I'd read somewhere that orbital objects in close proximity tend to adhere to one another. Should this be the case, successive launches of deceased groups of corpses could be tweaked to occupy the same area, bodies hanging out in a massive commune orbit after orbit, endlessly.
Until the Orbital Laser Broom comes online...-- whatrock, Aug 30 2021 Get enough of them and they could form their own planetoid. Maybe this was what the Mormons were on about? Lessee... if you had 144,000 dead bodies in space, all crammed together someplace away from other strong gravitational influences, how much gravitational pull do they pull on eachother?-- RayfordSteele, Sep 03 2021 A mole of moles… [link]-- Frankx, Sep 03 2021 Ooh. With enough human bodies, you could literally have a Planet of the Dead. Gruesome.-- Frankx, Sep 03 2021 random, halfbakery