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CNN Saturday Night

Interview With Chan Tysor

Aired August 30, 2003 - 22:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN ANCHOR: You've heard of lost in space. How about buried in space? Yes, you heard right. If you've always fantasized about space as your final frontier, and truly one of a kind memorial, a special company has your cosmic connection.
Joining me now is Chan Tysor, who is president of Celestus.

So Mr. Tysor, how does it work?

CHAN TYSOR, PRESIDENT, CELESTUS: Well, it's fairly straightforward, Andrea. After a person has been cremated, we provide the family with what we call our sampling kit with which they use to send us enough cremated remains for us to launch. We launch a symbolic portion of the cremated remains.

We put them in a flight capsule, just like this, which is engraved with the name of the deceased and a personal message as well. The flight capsules have been placed in a canister, which is sealed. And it's attached to a rocket or part of the rocket that will achieve earth orbit.

When we do the launches, we invite the families to come out. And we do, what we call, our family tour. We bring them down to the pad, usually a day or two before the launch. They can come close to the rocket and see where their loved ones cremated remains are attached.

Then we also do a memorial service. And it's an opportunity for everyone who can come out to the launch to come before the rest of the families that have come out and say a few words about their loved one, and their feelings about the service that they're about to provide in honor of their loved one.

We also do a pre-launch briefing, usually an hour or two before the launch to kind of let everybody know what to expect during the launch. Then we go down to usually a special viewing area, where we have audio and video of the rocket. And of course, we're able to see the rocket when it goes off.

Afterwards, we produce a personalized video for everyone, which captures scenes from the integration through the actual launch itself as a keepsake memorial.

KOPPEL: Now as you just showed us there, they look like the lipstick size container, but in fact, I guess that holds seven grams of...

TYSOR: Right.

KOPPEL: ...cremated person's remains. But you also have more budget sized ones. So give us a range of the prices.

TYSOR: Yes, well when we first started, we introduced the seven gram option. It's a symbolic portion. It's a small amount of the cremated remains. And that keeps the service affordable. Technically, there's no reason why we couldn't launch all of one's cremated remains, that it would just be too expensive, but still is expensive, unfortunately, to get anything into space.

Recently, we were able to develop a smaller flight capsule that holds one gram. Still, a symbolic portion. And of course, all of the things that I had just mentioned are included in that same service, but it's priced under $1,000, $995.

The seven gram option is $5300, which is still surprisingly affordable, as I talk to consumers about, about the service.

KOPPEL: The video that we're looking at, I should say we have less than a minute right now, but you've done this before. How many times? And you have another launch coming up, I understand, next April in Kazakhstan?

TYSOR: Right. The launch in Kazakhstan will be our fifth earth view mission. But it'll be our first time to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome. And we're really excited about that. It's an amazingly historic place. When it first was established in the mid '50s, officially it didn't exist.

But it was where the Soviets launched the Sputnik spacecraft in '57, where the first astronaut was launched into space. Yuri Gagarin in '61.

More recently were the two first space tourists, the Dennis Tito and March Shuttleworth were launched from in 2001. So we're really looking forward to having all of the families that can join us out there join us. We'll be launching on a very, very reliable launch vehicle called the Niper (ph). So it ought to be a lot of fun.

KOPPEL: Well, I have a feeling you're going to be getting some more calls after this program. It certainly sounds very interesting. And for people who've always dreamed of going into space, it's certainly one way of getting there.

Chan Tysor, thank you for joining us.

TYSOR: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired August 30, 2003 - 22:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN ANCHOR: You've heard of lost in space. How about buried in space? Yes, you heard right. If you've always fantasized about space as your final frontier, and truly one of a kind memorial, a special company has your cosmic connection.
Joining me now is Chan Tysor, who is president of Celestus.

So Mr. Tysor, how does it work?

CHAN TYSOR, PRESIDENT, CELESTUS: Well, it's fairly straightforward, Andrea. After a person has been cremated, we provide the family with what we call our sampling kit with which they use to send us enough cremated remains for us to launch. We launch a symbolic portion of the cremated remains.

We put them in a flight capsule, just like this, which is engraved with the name of the deceased and a personal message as well. The flight capsules have been placed in a canister, which is sealed. And it's attached to a rocket or part of the rocket that will achieve earth orbit.

When we do the launches, we invite the families to come out. And we do, what we call, our family tour. We bring them down to the pad, usually a day or two before the launch. They can come close to the rocket and see where their loved ones cremated remains are attached.

Then we also do a memorial service. And it's an opportunity for everyone who can come out to the launch to come before the rest of the families that have come out and say a few words about their loved one, and their feelings about the service that they're about to provide in honor of their loved one.

We also do a pre-launch briefing, usually an hour or two before the launch to kind of let everybody know what to expect during the launch. Then we go down to usually a special viewing area, where we have audio and video of the rocket. And of course, we're able to see the rocket when it goes off.

Afterwards, we produce a personalized video for everyone, which captures scenes from the integration through the actual launch itself as a keepsake memorial.

KOPPEL: Now as you just showed us there, they look like the lipstick size container, but in fact, I guess that holds seven grams of...

TYSOR: Right.

KOPPEL: ...cremated person's remains. But you also have more budget sized ones. So give us a range of the prices.

TYSOR: Yes, well when we first started, we introduced the seven gram option. It's a symbolic portion. It's a small amount of the cremated remains. And that keeps the service affordable. Technically, there's no reason why we couldn't launch all of one's cremated remains, that it would just be too expensive, but still is expensive, unfortunately, to get anything into space.

Recently, we were able to develop a smaller flight capsule that holds one gram. Still, a symbolic portion. And of course, all of the things that I had just mentioned are included in that same service, but it's priced under $1,000, $995.

The seven gram option is $5300, which is still surprisingly affordable, as I talk to consumers about, about the service.

KOPPEL: The video that we're looking at, I should say we have less than a minute right now, but you've done this before. How many times? And you have another launch coming up, I understand, next April in Kazakhstan?

TYSOR: Right. The launch in Kazakhstan will be our fifth earth view mission. But it'll be our first time to launch from Baikonur Cosmodrome. And we're really excited about that. It's an amazingly historic place. When it first was established in the mid '50s, officially it didn't exist.

But it was where the Soviets launched the Sputnik spacecraft in '57, where the first astronaut was launched into space. Yuri Gagarin in '61.

More recently were the two first space tourists, the Dennis Tito and March Shuttleworth were launched from in 2001. So we're really looking forward to having all of the families that can join us out there join us. We'll be launching on a very, very reliable launch vehicle called the Niper (ph). So it ought to be a lot of fun.

KOPPEL: Well, I have a feeling you're going to be getting some more calls after this program. It certainly sounds very interesting. And for people who've always dreamed of going into space, it's certainly one way of getting there.

Chan Tysor, thank you for joining us.

TYSOR: Thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com