Outer Space! My Life in Orbit

'''Outer Space! My Life in Orbit''' is a readable shard in.

Transcript
What's life in space like? Comfortable.

Of course, not everything's a bed of roses. Gravity below 1g isn't great for your bones or muscles. Synthesized food isn't to die for, and stuff from Earth is as rare as it is expensive. If you live in a private orbital station (congrats, you're richer than me!), you always see the same faces. But if you lie in a hybrid station like Crystal Palace, you'll have to live with corporat bachelor parties every weekend. But don't let that put you off! There are more upsides than downsides to living in orbit.

First of all: safety. To get into orbit you need a lot of zeroes in your bank account, which means you won't see legions of homeless people, skezzed out gangsters or aggressive joytoys (the exception to that being the Lunar colonies, but no self-respecting Orbital-dweller would ever set foot there). In other words - you can walk outside at night unarmed, without security, and come back home in one piece, wallet undisturbed. Amazing, right?

Secondly: quality of service. Anyone in the customer service sector had to rack up an enormous debt to come up here. Their only hope to pay it off within their lifetimes is to rake in a lot (and I mean A LOT) of tips, which means they'll bend over backwards to satisfy every whim, if you're an employer, you don't have to worry that an employee you just hired and trained at your expense will suddenly quit and go work for the competition for a few extra eddies a week. Many stations, especially the private ones, simply don't have competition, and if they do it's basically negligible - agreements can be made so situations like that don't occur.

Thirdly, and most importantly: no government can tell you what to do, where and how. Orbital stations are autonomous and governed by their own laws... and there aren't that many of them. If you can afford your own station, you're the undisputed lord and master of your little corner of space. You want to tie the help up to a whipping post when they make a mistake? Go right ahead. Want five wives or four husbands? I'm sure you'll have a line of willing volunteers.