An ethic of deliberate stewardship
Suffering matters, wherever it occurs. That conviction shapes our approach to what remains: long-duration containment, deep-space departure, and solar delivery.
Explore the conceptsThree concepts. Two scopes. A commitment to thinking beyond ourselves.
Matter has a future.
Give it serious thought.
01 — The starting point
Four premises.
One precautionary conclusion.
Our starting view is that many wild lives contain more suffering than enjoyment. The interests of those animals deserve moral weight.
The thought experiment adds a speculative premise: future experience could depend on the reuse of a person’s matter.
We believe humans should avoid causing unnecessary suffering, wherever it occurs and whoever experiences it.
We reject the idea that wild animals’ pain becomes necessary or good simply because it occurs in nature.
Under that hypothesis, our proposal is to explore keeping human remains out of Earth’s ecological cycles for as long as practicable, provided doing so does not create greater harm.
Explore the three approaches02 — Three directions
Three approaches to the future of human remains. Compare each destination, separation timescale, and estimated budget, with whole-body and brain-only scope.
Whole body considers the remains together, with an enclosure or mission sized for the complete body.
A material boundary. A longer interval.
A layered enclosure for whole-body remains, designed around one objective: delaying exchange with the surrounding biosphere.
Layered enclosure · protected placement · a dedicated stewardship reserve.
Distance on an astronomical scale.
An outbound mission concept for whole-body remains, with physical separation from Earth’s biosphere as its destination.
Payload integration · outbound spacecraft · launch and mission operations.
A destination on a stellar scale.
A solar-delivery mission concept for whole-body remains, transferring material from Earth to a stellar environment.
Solar mission design · specialist spacecraft · launch and operations.
Timescales refer to Earth’s external ecological cycles after successful placement or delivery. Space budgets cover a dedicated mission program. Read the estimate assumptions ↓
03 — Side by side
| Consideration | 01 Containment | 02 Deep space | 03 Solar delivery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where material goes | Within an enclosure on Earth | On an outbound trajectory | Into a dynamic stellar environment |
| Proposed scope | Whole-body remains | Whole-body remains | Whole-body remains |
| Estimated separation from Earth’s biosphere | 1,000-year design targetIllustrative target · service life not validated | Potentially millions of yearsAfter successful Solar-System escape | No reliable duration estimateThe Sun circulates and ejects material |
| What separation depends on | Barrier integrity and long-term stewardship | Mission success and the future trajectory | Delivery and the Sun’s movement of matter |
| Planning focus | Durability and stewardship | Distance and trajectory | Sunward delivery |
| Main cost drivers | Custom enclosure, placement, and reserve funding | Spacecraft, launch, and mission operations | Mission complexity, spacecraft, and launch |
| Illustrative budget · USD | $75k–250k | $100m–500m | $500m–2bn |
Compare budgets on the same basis: one containment placement or one dedicated space mission. Cost assumptions appear below.
04 — What we stand for
The scale of a life does not determine the importance of its suffering.
We believe the prevention of suffering is an ethical obligation. Species, size, and distance from our daily lives do not make another being’s pain less important.
Human remains have a physical future. Our approach makes that future an explicit design question: where material goes, how it is held, and who takes responsibility for it.
Care for the future begins with care in the present. Environmental costs, resource use, consent, and the people who remain belong at the centre of every proposal.
05 — The practical questions
Scope, destination, and the resources each approach requires.
Containment keeps remains on Earth behind a designed material barrier. Deep-space departure centres on an outbound trajectory. Solar delivery centres on transfer to the Sun. The distinction is physical: a boundary, a journey away, or a stellar destination.
The proposed scope becomes smaller. For containment, that changes the enclosure and placement allowance. For a space mission, the payload changes, but much of the spacecraft, launch, and operations budget remains. Other bodily remains sit outside the brain-only proposal and require separate arrangements.
The model combines a custom enclosure, specialist design and handling allowances, placement, and an initial stewardship reserve. The reserve is a capital allocation, not an annual subscription. The detailed cost build-up is listed in the estimate notes below.
These estimates concern a dedicated mission carrying the selected remains. A launch slot is only one cost: spacecraft development, integration, testing, operations, and contingency also contribute. Prices for sending grams of ashes or DNA are not prices for transporting a whole body or brain.
Reaching the Sun involves a different mission design from leaving Earth. A payload inherits Earth’s sideways orbital motion, which makes solar delivery technically demanding. The estimate therefore gives solar missions a separate spacecraft and engineering allowance.
All figures are in US dollars. Containment is estimated per placement; the space options are whole-program budgets for one dedicated mission. Switch between whole body and brain only to see how scope affects the model, then review the assumptions and references at the bottom of the page.
Read estimate notes ↓Take suffering seriously.
Think beyond the familiar.