Ashes Heading For Final Frontier

In death as in life, “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and LSD guru Timothy Leary are blazing new trails - this time through space.

The ashes of the two pioneers, loaded on a rocket strapped to a jet’s wing, left California on Sunday for Madrid, Spain, where they will be launched into space over the Canary Islands next month.

Their remains were among those of 24 people, packed in lipstick-sized capsules by the newly formed Houston-based Celestis Inc. Their families each paid $4,800.

The venture seemed a perfect final trip for Roddenberry and Leary. Roddenberry sought to take TV viewers and filmgoers where “no one has gone before”; Leary urged people to alter their consciousness through another kind of trip.

“Who better deserves to go into space than Gene Roddenberry?” his widow, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, said Sunday.

Leary, known for his psychedelic drug use, learned of the idea shortly before his death at 75 last year.

According to Carol Rosin, a long-time friend, Leary said, “Finally, now I will be the light and everyone will know, and finally I’ll travel with the other space pioneers.”