HE'S going to be all right, up tight "and out of sight. Timothy Leary, the 1960s guru of LSD and 1990s icon of the Internet, takes the ultimate trip today when his ashes are blasted into space.
The cremated remains of Leary, who died of prostate cancer at the age of 75 last May, will be launched into orbit with those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 22 other space "enthusiasts for the world's first apace funeral.
The journey into space will begin on a Pegasus rocket, carried aloft by a Lockheed L-1011 jetliner from Gran Canaria, Spain's Defence Ministry said.
The rocket will be released from the aircraft at 11,000 metres (36,000 feet), where it will fall until its engines ignite. At 600 kms the rocket will first deploy the Minisat, the first satellite entirely designed and constructed in Spain, which will remain in orbit for two years. Soon after, the part of the rocket storing the containers of human ashes will break away. The lipstick-sized capsules containing seven grams (0.25 oz) of remains will orbit the earth for anywhere between 18 months and 10 years before gravity pulls them back into the atmosphere where they will burn up in a flash of light.
Leary, who urged a generation of Americans to get high on LSD so they could "turn on, tune in and drop out", was fired from Harvard in 1963. Former president Richard Nixon branded him "the most dangerous man in America".