Charles Chafer, the co-founder and chairman of Celestis, Inc., has a good response in Space News to those who claim Celestis should not take the remains of our honored dead to the moon:
An editorial recently published on SpaceNews took the position that my company’s Luna Memorial Spaceflight service should not be permitted on the Moon because the Navajo Nation views the Moon as sacred.
In essence, the author is arguing that lawful space missions should be subject to the religious test of a single culture.
The heart of the argument, however, really comes down to how we see our future and the moon’s role in it. Is the moon a celestial body meant only for science and passive art, as the author says, or is there a more robust future for our nearest neighbor?
Read the whole thing.