Space, the funeral frontier for Star Trek Scotty

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Remains of Star Trek actor James Doohan, who played the USS Enterprise's chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, were launched from a site in New Mexico, along with those of former US astronaut Gordon Cooper and 200 others.

Widows Wende Doohan and Suzan Cooper fired the rocket which took off at 8.56am local time (3.56pm BST) and disappeared into the atmosphere within 12 seconds.

Click here to watch Scotty's ashes being blastde into space

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Rocket man: James Doohan

It marked the first successful launch from Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport.

Family members paid $495 (£248) to place a few grammes of their relatives' ashes on the rocket.

Scotty was beamed up on the SpaceLoft XL rocket as piper Bill Meagher played a traditional Scottish lament, watched by dozens of Trekkies', as well as friends and family.

Wende said her husband, who died aged 85 in 2005, would have been thrilled at the "space funeral" following a poignant service at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

"He would be ecstatic," she said. "He would be the one pressing the button. He totally was so into space."

One well-wisher, former pastor Will Steinsiek, 55, resplendent in a Star Trek costume, said:

"These funerals are a way to reach a dream, the dream to go into space and back again."

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's remains were fired into space in 1997, six years after his death.

The line "Beam me up, Scotty" has become a notorious misquote. The closest Captain Kirk came to saying it was in the fourth Star Trek movie, when he said "Scotty, beam me up".