‘Scotty’s ashes ready to find final frontier

ALBUQUERQUE – One-hundred and one to beam up.

James Doohan, the actor who played chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott on the original “Star Trek” TV series, will have a few grams of his ashes launched 70 miles into space this fall from southern New Mexico.

Houston-based Space Services, Inc., plans also to have the ashes of 100 others aboard the “memorial spaceflight” Oct. 21 – among them Gordon Cooper, one of the Mercury astronauts who were America’s first space travelers during the 1960s.

Doohan, who died at his Redmond home last July at age 85, told relatives he wanted his ashes blasted into outer space, as was done for “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry.

Doohan’s widow, Wende Doohan, said her husband would have wanted such a send-off.

“If the privatization of space was available when he was alive, he would have been first in line with a window-seat ticket,” Doohan said Tuesday. “It’s a way to honor something he would have loved to have done.”