I'd imagine that the vast majority of your average-Joe types would just stay in their little burgs and work at their ordinary, everyday jobs. Going off-planet would be like going all the way across the country... and they happen to live in Russia/Canada.
' Wrote:Uh... to be old enough to be on a sleeper ship... you would have to be...
800+
Yeah no.
What if they were never taken out of stasis for some reason? Someone could RP it I think. It had better be pretty good though, you better have extensive knowledge of the alliance, the war with the coalition and the conditions in the Sol System when the sleeper ships left.
You wouldn't even have to stay in stasis. Just upload your brain to a computer or cyborg shell or use advanced nanomachines that repair your body all the time. Remember, we're talking about the future here - even if this technology may not be available to your average Joe (he might not even know about is, because governments could deliberately keep these technologies secret), it's certainly available to the extremely wealthy and powerful.
Trade lanes facilitate super luminary travel. While traveling at the speed of light (one cannot exceed C), time has next to no effect. As such, any time spent in the trade lanes has little effect on the aging of the pilot.
So, theoretically, long distance cargo haulers could live much longer than the standard planetside citizen.
Even someone on a very short, safe route (say Manhattan to West Point) will pass through a considerable distance/time in a trade lane. This will, over time, have a significant effect on their "lifespan" in comparison to someone who never uses trade lanes (say a Corsair hauling from Crete to Tripoli-also a safe, short route, but no trade lanes involved). Of course, for the trade lane user, they do not "feel" as tho they had lived for so long-they will only "feel" 40 years old or whatever...