In Star Trek terms, it was a simple mission.

But the company that blasted the ashes of James Doohan - better known as Scotty - into space has been forced to admit that the rocket they used has been lost.

The plan was simple: the actor's remains, along with those of 213 others, were put on board a rocket to be fired into 'sub-orbital space'.

The craft would shoot upwards 72 miles before splitting in two and parachuting back to Earth so the ashes could be returned to relatives.

But the mission went drastically wrong and the rocket has been lost for two weeks in the New Mexico desert.

Susan Schonfeld, of Space Services Inc, said that search teams has repeatedly failed to find the craft in the area where it is believed to have landed.

She said: "The terrain is very mountainous - it's not somewhere that you can walk or drive to and the weather there has been horrendous."

The disaster will upset Doohan's widow, Wende, who has been planning the send-off for two years since his death in 2005 at the age of 85.

She has said the man who travelled on so many missions with the Enterprise always regretted that he never made it into space himself.

Doohan played the starship Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery Scott in the original 1966-1969 Star Trek television series.

He inspired the legendary catch phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" - even though it was never actually uttered on the show.

Space Services Inc. charges £250 to send a portion of a person's ashes into suborbital space.

In 1997 the company blasted the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry into space.

DailyMail.co.uk

...... and boys and girls, the moral of the story is ......

"you can never be to careful, when getting your ashes hauled.! ! !"