Late UWF professor joins U.S. presidents, Star Trek cast on endless journey through space

The last class University of West Florida physics professor James "Jim" Marsh taught before his retirement in 2008 was on black holes, those mysterious regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape its grip.

Who knows? Maybe Marsh will run into a black hole during his perpetual flight that will travel to deep space.

Partial remains of Marsh, who died in 2022 at the age of 85, were launched into space on Jan. 8 as part of the Enterprise Flight, a venture by the Houston-based memorial space flight company Celestis.

On the spacecraft that departed from Cape Canaveral are 234 flight capsules, most of which contain DNA or cremated remains of its 264 participants. The remains of many from the original "Star Trek" series are onboard, including the show's creator Gene Rodenberry and series actors Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan. Also onboard are hair follicles from presidents George Washington, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

What would Marsh think of his physical fate?

"Nifty," piped in his daughter, Rebecca Marsh of Pensacola.

Her siblings ‒ Jessica Marsh, Samantha Wachob and Jacob Marsh ‒ nodded in agreement.

"Nifty," Wachob echoed. "He would think it's nifty."

"Expensive," he would say. "But nifty."

Once the Enterprise Flight completes its approximately two-year journey to its deep space destination it will be renamed Enterprise Station − humankind’s furthest outpost − where it will remain in heliocentric orbit around the sun and journey endlessly (Deep space refers to space well beyond the Earth and Earth/moon orbit).

Celestis invited family members to the launch and allows them ‒ and the public ‒ to track the mission on satellite through its website.

Marsh was a beloved presence at UWF, where he began teaching in 1969 and was named a UWF professor emeritus in 2008. A true eccentric in the most wonderful sense of the word, Marsh dabbled in many fields, though he preferred wearing one hat ‒ a Greek sailor's hat he often wore, along with boots and a leather jacket. On a motorcycle, the bearded Marsh cut a dashing figure. In the classroom, he was cutting edge, teaching young minds about subjects ranging from holograms, lasers and optics to black holes, general and special relativity, as well as quantum mechanics.

He was also a college radio disc jockey, a founder of the Pensacola International Folk Dancers, a musician with both the Dogwood Dulcimer Association and the Blues Angel Music ukulele group.

Now, he's out there, traveling a world he could only study and peer up at while confined to Earth. He's part of the cosmos now, fitting for a man who seemed to explore new possibilities and challenges while here.

"He was such a good dad and so involved," said Jessica Marsh, the oldest of his children. "I looked up his name, his Google footprint in the last few years, and found all these physics articles he published. I wouldn't even understand the titles. But it struck me because at the end of the day after writing these articles, he would come home and dance around the living room to Disney music with me. He was a genius, but he was my dad."

Marsh's children ‒ his wife and the children's mother, Judith, died in 2005 ‒ learned about Celestis and the company's various memorial flights when looking over options for his remains.

"It seemed like something that was special, kind of crazy and off the wall while also very science minded," Jessica Marsh said. "Of course, it's perfect for him because that's how he was ‒ special and off the wall yet very science minded. It was perfect."

The Enterprise Flight launch was Celestis' 22nd memorial flight since the company's founding in 1994.

Celestis offers various memorial flight services ranging from Earth Rise ($3,495), where remains are flown to space then back where they are delivered to family members, to Voyager Service, which includes flights similar to the Enterprise Flight ($12,995). Flights also deliver remains to the moon, or into earth orbit where the capsule will eventually reenter the atmosphere, harmlessly vaporizing in a final burst of glory. For details, go to www.celestis.com.

Enterprise Flight, which will eventually become Enterprise Station, is charting new territory in terms of human burial ceremonies and rituals, said retired Air Force veteran Colby Youngblood, Celestis president who joined the company in February 2022.

"It will be there long after the Earth is gone," Youngblood said. "It will be become the longest lasting memorial in human history, and it will always be the first of its kind."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: UWF professor Jim Marsh on Celestis space memorial Enterprise Flight