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Physics professor Kenneth Ohm is sending his DNA to the moon with the hope that some day advanced humans or aliens will find it and clone him.
He hopes to do this with the help of Celestis, a Texas-based company that has been launching the cremated remains of humans into space since they shot Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and psychologist and author Timothy Leary’s ashes into orbit back in 1997.
Others who have had their remains shot into space by Celestis include rocket scientist Krafft A. Ehricke, physicist Gerard O’Neill, planetary geologist Eugene Shoemaker, astronaut L. Gordon Cooper, and Star Trek actor James Doohan.
Several others are currently on the list of those will follow suit once they too are deceased.
Some of those people recently spoke to the New York Times about why they are doing it and what they expect to happen.
Among them was Ken Ohm, a professor of physics.
In the 1960s, the now 82-year-old Ohm dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but at 6-feet-2 in height NASA told him he was too tall.
He won’t have that problem when his DNA is loaded on board a Celestis upon his passing.
“The Celestis memorial capsules carrying cremated remains and DNA will remain on the lunar surface as a permanent tribute to the intrepid souls who never stopped reaching for the stars,” reads the company’s website.
Ohm admits that his ashes will still be buried in a family plot, but his DNA is going to be sent to the lunar south pole.
That way, he says his descendants will be able to look up at the full moon every month and perhaps think to themselves, “Old Ken has his DNA up there.”
His biggest reason for sending his DNA to the moon, however, is completely unrelated to that sentiment.
Ohm hopes that tens of thousands of years from now someone either from Earth or perhaps an alien civilization will travel to the moon, find his DNA, and perhaps clone him.
The Times says Ohm has “considered the prospect of an intergalactic zoo with a Ken Ohm in a cage, or — much more frightening, particularly for his wife, he jokes — a swarm of thousands of reconstituted Ken Ohms spreading across the universe.”
After all, he says, if whoever finds his DNA on the moon is advanced enough to do so, who knows what they will do with it once it’s discovered?