Stephen Colbert's DNA headed to space station
Last Updated: Monday, September 8, 2008 | 9:21 AM ET
The Associated Press
Should this world ever cease to exist, Stephen Colbert could live on.
On Monday, Comedy Central will announce plans to digitize the comedian's DNA and send it to the International Space Station.
On Oct. 12, video game designer Richard Garriott is scheduled travel to the station and deposit Colbert's genes for an "Immortality Drive."
Garriott, born in England but raised in the U.S., made his name as one of the makers of the Ultima series. He has punched his ticket aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket through the U.S. company Space Adventures, which has brokered five previous space tourist trips.
He is collecting material for a time capsule of human DNA, a history of humanity's greatest achievements and personal messages.
The host of The Colbert Report will essentially be preserved so that aliens could clone him.
Garriott said there are few better candidates to turn to in the unlikely event that humanity is destroyed and needs to be resurrected.
"I am thrilled to have my DNA shot into space, as this brings me one step closer to my lifelong dream of being the baby at the end of 2001," Colbert said in a statement, referring to the 1968 landmark science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
