why don't we do something more useful with our deceased?

Question

instead on burying or burning our dead, why aren't we launching them into space? where it's then possible for a corpse to land on some other planet somewhere else in the galaxy. a dead corpse on a lifeless planet just may speed up the process of making life on other planets. I don't mean that another human being will spawn there, but maybe some bacteria or something will be able to multiply, feeding on the corpse and accelerating life on other planets by maybe a couple million years. Or, an alien civilization may stumble apon one of our dead bodies and give them awareness of us if they didn't already have it. it's just a thought. I don't want to be buried or creamated. I want to be tossed into space. don't I have the right to make that decision?

Answer 1

seems logical. and it doesn't matter how long it takes to get there. a possible scenario could be this; you are flung into space at a high velocity perpendicular to the plane of our solar system. then, during your flight, which may be a million years, your body will not decompose. and you eventually get caught into the gravitaional feild of a distant star or planet. What would happen if we through a dead beached whale into our sun? I dunno, but it's gotta do something. Or you can land on a planet with no atmosphere like neptune, and since there's no atmosphere, you won't burn on entry. You would just accelerate and smash into the surface. then, your body can provide the right energies to produce life. This speeds up the evolution process of that particular lifeless planet. I mean, why don't we bury our dead on the moon, or better yet, leave them on the surface perfectly preserved in the airless tomb.

Answer 2

Not only is that expensive and unlikely to ever pay off.. not to mention the problems with thinking a corpse could help to terraform a planet. It would burn up uppon entry and even if it didn't, the impact would vaporize whatever was left and even in the unlikely circumstance that some viable genetic material did make it.. it's not likely to make any noticeable difference.

Also, you'd virtualy need to pay people to do this, except for the few like me who would say 'Being flung into space sounds like a cool way wo spend eternity!' You could try to make people, but they'd cite religious freedom and they'd be right.

Also, it's not useless to enrich the planet we live on NOW with our compost.

But, I'm glad you're thinking in different ways.

Answer 3

But how do you plan to get the funds for that?
Being tossed into space would require a rocket, which could cost
millions and millions of dollars. If you did somehow manage to take flight into space, how would a civilazation that thinks like us would react if they had not made contact with other life forms?
They would rush madely around and panic! The unknown is what causes fear, as all fears can be traced to the unknown. The farther away the fear is linked to the unknown, the fear grows less, like if you know most of something. If the unknown crash landed on your planet's largest city, you'd wet your pants!

Answer 4

(1) Cost to get them there
(2) We don't have a couple of million years for the bacteria to evolve into something meaningful
(3) The time it would take for the body to get somewhere (if light takes hundreds of years to get here, then a body travelling at some tiny fraction of that speed will take a **really** long time!!)
(4) Send me a check for 100 million dollars, and I'll see to it that you're tossed into space when you're dead. Cheers.

Answer 5

Reasons are obvious IMO;

It would be a way-too-expensive way to get rid of the dead, thus it wouldn't be logical... ;)
Plus: If we're gonna get crazy at dead's ends; why don't we use the dead as fertilizer?! As one told me, "human corpses and whatever remains would be the BEST fertilizers, if 'permitted' "
BTW: alien organisms probably won't need our carbon based organic leftovers. Couldn't they use different mechanism for sustaining / developing life ;)

Were you speakin' about using dead in useful ways? :)

Answer 6

The treatment of the dead is religious- that is, people think they are making arrangements for the departed spirit. In one village in Africa, the dead are placed on a framework outside the village, so the vultures can eat them. Seminole in Florida place their dead on platforms above ground to keep alligators from eating them. All dead are handled according to religious beliefs.

Answer 7

This is your brain in way toooooo muuuuuuch Whiskey egg nog in X-mas eve and it's only almost 2 o'clock OMG!!!!

Answer 8

Who watches too much Star Trek? Why don't we do something more useful with our living?

Answer 9

hmmmmmmmmmm, colonization or contamination, or invasion by corpse !, why not just make them soylent green !