A former Blue Origin engineer is betting he can democratize the final frontier - literally. Space Beyond just locked in a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare slot for October 2027 to send up to 1,000 people's ashes into orbit for as little as $249 per person, a fraction of the thousands competitors charge. Founder Ryan Mitchell, who spent nearly a decade at Jeff Bezos' space company after working on NASA's shuttle program, is using CubeSat tech and rideshare economics to turn what's been a luxury service into something almost anyone can afford.
Space Beyond founder Ryan Mitchell was staring at the stars during a camping trip when the question hit him: what's next? After nearly a decade at Blue Origin and earlier work on NASA's space shuttle program, he'd watched access to space get cheaper by the year, thanks mostly to SpaceX. Those stars didn't seem quite so far away anymore.
The answer came at a family member's ash-spreading ceremony. "When it was over, we were kind of like, 'now what?' The moment was gone," Mitchell told TechCrunch. "How could I do this better?"
On Thursday, Space Beyond announced it signed a launch services agreement with Arrow Science & Technology to integrate a CubeSat memorial payload onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission in October 2027. The mission will carry up to 1,000 customers' ashes into orbit - one gram each - with pricing starting at just $249.
That's a brutal undercut of the existing space memorial industry. Companies like Celestis have offered similar services since the 1990s, but typically charge thousands of dollars per flight. Mitchell's betting that rideshare economics and a bootstrapped business model can crack open a market that's been stuck in luxury territory for decades.
"I've been told I'm not charging enough for this service," Mitchell said, especially given how the funeral industry operates. "But I'm not looking to take over the world, and I'm not looking to make a billion dollars doing this."
