13-06-2025
Lifelong sci-fi fan launched into space in loving, posthumous tribute
From boyhood, Steve Garner Nielson qualified as the most devoted sci-fi nerd in the galaxy, so passionate about all things space that he loved 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek' equally — a heresy all but the truly obsessed.
He kept bookshelves stocked with 'Hitchhikers's Guide' and intergalactic sagas, and he posed Yoda, a stormtrooper and R2D2 in his backyard garden rather than gnomes.
'He could tell you the evolution of the Tribbles,' said his wife, Karin.
After he died in 2023, she joked in his obituary that he'd been kidnapped as a child by aliens from Area 51 and written every episode of 'The Mandalorian.'
So in the next few days, she will give her departed husband the most fitting tribute for any dreamer with his eyes fixed permanently on the stars:
A posthumous trip into space.
Thanks to Celestis Memorial Spaceflights, Steve's ashes will ride a Falcon 9 rocket into low-Earth orbit and circle the planet three times at 17,000 mph while his terrestrial family waves from below.
The Perseverance Flight will ferry capsules containing cremated remains from Nielson and 150 other clients through the cosmos, then drop them back gently into the Pacific Ocean, where they will be recovered like triumphant astronauts — ticker-tape parade not included.
'I'm just going to be thinking about how much he is loved,' Karin Nielson said. 'He always complained how unfair it was that billionaires and their rich friends could go to outer space and the people who really wanted to go couldn't because they couldn't afford it.'
Nielson could trace his fascination with the final frontier to a childhood trip to Cape Canaveral, where he and his parents watched the space shuttle launch — back when spaceflight got covered on live TV and everybody tuned in.
The road to his romantic life with Karin would involve more twists and turns.
They met in their high school youth group at Kirk of Kildaire Presbyterian Church, which sent them building playgrounds in Robeson County.
One day Karin took hold of an augur and gripped the handle so tightly her feet started shaking around, and she might have gotten sucked into the hole she was digging if Steve hadn't come around behind her and taken hold of the out-of-control machine.
'It would sound like it was this wonderful meet-cute,' Karin recalled. 'That is exactly what did not happen.'
Rather, the two of them bonded in mutual awkwardness, stealing away for odd chat time.
'During lock-ins,' she said, 'we would go into a different room and talk about the ramifications of Agent Orange, the defoliant. That was our idea of flirting. We were nerds.'
They went their separate ways in college, but reunited years later when she asked Steve if he wanted to attend her office Christmas party at AT&T Solutions Providers — not everyone's idea of fun. But Steve jumped right in.
They married and traveled to the Panama Canal for their honeymoon.
'Steve loved it.'
They had a son, Andrew, whom they took for a visit to NASA.
And when diabetes triggered a leg amputation, Steve kept going as a stay-at-home dad. Heart and kidney problems followed, but he stayed a fighter, knowing he could win battles but not the whole war.
After he died in November of 2023, Karin discovered the array of options available for cremated remains, including installing them in an artificial reef off the coast of Florida.
She asked, 'Could you send him to space?'
If she wanted, Karin could have launched Steve's ashes into deep space — an option Celestis offers starting at $12,995.
For the same price, she could put him in lunar orbit or on the surface of the Moon.
She chose what they called 'the budget option,' running roughly $3,000 with the added perk of a reunion.
When he blasts off, sometime between June 19 and June 23, he will return the wide-eyed explorer he always was, this time touched by actual stardust, a witness to the whole planet's turning.
He will, in some special way, tell them all about it, laughing like Han Solo outrunning a star destroyer.
'We don't see this as a goodbye,' said Karin. 'Just as a see you later.'
