UND Space Studies founder and wife cross the final frontier

Feb. 1—GRAND FORKS — These are the voyages of the capsule Enterprise.

Its 10,000-year mission, to carry the founding father of UND Space Studies and his wife — and a few other people — beyond familiar worlds, to enter solar orbit as Earth's first "crewed" mission to the sun, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Within a reasonable degree of certainty.

The remains of one David and Liliane Webb departed this earth from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the early hours of Jan. 8, in the company of "Star Trek" founder Gene Roddenberry and much of the show's original cast. (And a couple hundred other people's remains.)

It was an appropriate final voyage for the couple, who crossed oceans and continents in their lifetimes, rubbed shoulders with pioneers of space travel and helped shape the field into what it is today.

Irish-born philanthropist David came to UND in the mid-1980s to establish the Space Studies program at the College of Aerospace Sciences. He'd been serving on President Ronald Reagan's National Commission on Space, and had been recruited for the job by no less than Buzz Aldrin.

According to longtime friend and colleague MoiraLynn Mefein, Webb lived the life of a swashbuckler. He raced motorcycles and cars, sailed across the Atlantic in his early twenties, and mapped the Arctic Red River in the Northwest Territories on a canoe expedition.

"David was one of the last great adventurers of the 20th century," she said.

Liliane was no slouch either. Born to a Berlin art historian who defied Hitler and was sent to the Eastern Front for his trouble, she survived the Second World War, worked for the newly-formed United Nations as an interpreter and gradually made her way west.

She met and married David in Montreal, before moving to Washington, D.C., where David consulted for the U.S. government and defense contractors and advocated for space exploration.

Pablo de León, the latest to hold the Space Studies chair originated by Webb, became friends with the man while living in Florida; he was struck by the vigor of the then-elderly Webb.

"He seemed like a young man because he was so enthusiastic and so devoted to the future and possibility of space flight," de León said. "He didn't show his age."

David Webb died in 2016; Liliane preceded him by at least a decade. Mefein, who David moved in with after Liliane died, got wind of a program called Celestis that launched cremated human remains into space. She persuaded David and Liliane's children to send some of their ashes up on a flight.

"Deep space was the right decision for someone who'd spent his life on the space program, and his wife with him," she said.

But the story comes with a twist appropriate for a TV serial, or perhaps the Webbs' own adventures.

Aboard the same Vulcan Centaur rocket that launched the Webbs into space was the Peregrine lunar lander, a privately-built craft that's part of a NASA program to support plans to eventually return to the moon.

The lunar lander never made it to the moon's surface — a propellant leak derailed its trajectory. Technicians directed the lander to burn up in the atmosphere over the Pacific on Jan. 18, and another Celestis capsule, Tranquility, burned up with it.

De León — who, for his part, has been down in Cape Canaveral for much of January — figured the curtain had closed on his friend's final voyage when asked by the Herald. (So did a few internet commenters, and, for a little while, Wikipedia.)

Celestis, though, says the Enterprise capsule was part of a separate payload that separated as planned from the lunar lander and engaged in a second "burn" to propel the Enterprise's payload out of the Earth's orbit and toward the sun.

"I can tell you the mission was dead-solid perfect," said Charles Chafer, Celestis' co-founder and CEO.

A spokesperson from United Launch Alliances, the rocket manufacturer, corroborated Chafer's statement.

Not that Celestis really knows where the Webbs are now, either: deep space is, of course, massive, and according to Chafer, the only way to track objects out there is NASA's already-overtaxed Deep Space Network.

The company is working on releasing a predictive model of the Enterprise's relative location sometime this week.

Mefein, for her part, has no doubt they've ended up in the right place.

"Two people who were the light of my life will be the light of deep space," she said.