by Tarah Benner
Now more than ever, we must get comfortable with the idea that our information and attention are the products being bought and sold.
I don’t wish to leave you with a bleak outlook, so I’ll share one more fun thing that I stumbled upon during my research for this book: If you want to become a space tourist like the patrons of Maverick Enterprises, you may soon have your chance.
While Virgin Galactic has been selling tickets to space for a decade, Blue Origin will begin selling tickets for commercial suborbital flights in 2019. If you don’t have $250,000 lying around for a space vacation, you might be able to go to space for your final vacation.
The “space burial” that Maggie and Jonah describe in Colony Assassin is not pure fiction. There is a company called Celestis that specializes in memorial spaceflights. The company’s “Earth Rise” service starts just under $1,900. You can send your ashes or DNA to orbit the earth for $5,000, create a permanent memorial on the moon for $12,500, or take a never-ending journey into deep space for $14,000.
Considering what funerals cost these days, I’d say a space burial is a bargain. Certainly it’s more accessible to the masses than a space flight for the living. When writing the book, I envisioned that anyone who died in service to the Space Force or Maverick Enterprises would receive a space burial — one last flight through the cosmos.
I hope you enjoyed this installment in The Elderon Chronicles. I had a good time writing it, and I hope that you will stick around for the rest of the journey. I have big things in store for Maggie and Jonah. You’re going to love book four.
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Until next time, take care. And stay human, my friends. Stay human.
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Looking for your next great read?
Check out more books by Tarah Benner:
Recon
Exposure
Outbreak
Lockdown
Annihilation
Lawless
Lifeless
Ruthless
Dauntless
Bound in Blood
The Defectors
Enemy Inside
The Last Uprising
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