As some of you know, I've been organizing a Labor Day Vegas trip since 1984 with college buddies............plus a few stragglers. One of the 14 regulars (my college roommate) died of cancer in 2006, so the Vegas crew needed to do something. Jeff was an engineer, a bit of a wild man, and a prankster, so this needed to fun and touching.
I've always been good friends with his widow, so I explained my idea, asking for approval. I wanted some ashes for the 2006 Vegas trip, to send Jeff up inside a 3 stage Estes model rocket, sprinkling his ashes across Las Vegas from 2800 feet altitude. She thought it was a great idea. I then cleared the idea with his parents, and finally I cleared it with his identical twin brother who also does the Vegas trip. Everyone loved the idea.
We put his ashes into the packing for the parachute, and shot Jeff into outer space from the Plaza parking lot. And yes, we entered McCarren airspace, so we had to wait between planes so we didn't hit a Southwest 737.
It looked like security was going to shut us down, but it finally happened. A camera also popped out with the parachute and took several pictures along the descent. We laughed and laughed as each stage blasted off. Jeff would have loved it. For good measure we sent two more rockets up that day.
To this day, we still wear rocket pins on our shirts each Labor Day trip in honor of our old astronaut buddy.
