There really is no evidence in Trek to suggest that the average citizen of Earth (or any other planet) spends much time in space (or doing anything like orbital skydiving).
Of course not, because Kirk went orbital skydiving did in a cut scene from Generation, B'Elanna did it in Voyager, and apparently they're doing it again in this movie.
All highly trained Starfleet officers. The best and the brightest. Not the average citizens or blue-color workers. And it was considered somewhat thrill-seeking and reckless in the first two cases, and apparently an emergency situation in the last.
We see civilians flying about space doing business everywhere. Space bars and the like adjoining it.
Business travelers. They're on business trips, just like people do today... and people today don't live on planes or in airports -- they're passing through on their way to and from their destinations. The same could be true for most of the civilians we see. And Starbase 11, for instance, was planet-based, as were many others apparently.
WE are planning those vacations and tourist attractions NOW. By the 23rd century? Tseh, I'm probably being conservative.
Yes, exactly -- tourism. Like I said, people take cruises now. As tourists. There are, what, 8 or 10 billion people on Earth in Trek's time? You think even a small fraction of them have been to space? I don't see it, no. What population of Earth today has been on a cruise? How many have never seen an ocean? I think it is a real reach to believe, even in Trek's vision of the future, that more than a few million people on Earth ever make it into space. I think that's being much more realistic and pragmatic than you are.
Correct. Space is much less forgiving than water.
And Trek is supposed to be the adventures of Horatio Hornblower in space.
No, the evidence suggests that us humans and other species are everywhere throughout space.
Throughout Federation territory... mostly on planets, not just hanging out in space.
On the other hand, by your reckoning back in the classic era, hardly anyone did any farming. They were all strapping super heroes with divine help and adversities fighting wars and having adventures.
No, like
Qonos pointed out, you have that exactly backward...
We only see the adventures of a few hundred people, the best and brightest, officers in Starfleet. Back on Earth, there are
billions of "normal" people who are farming, running restaurants, building houses and bridges, playing in the world soccer leagues, repairing power systems, etc. We don't see them because there isn't a show about the ordinary lives of those ordinary people. Do they work and live in space? No. Have they been space tourists? Possibly. Are they more comfortable on Earth than cooped up in a spaceship or station? Quite possibly. Why trade spacious planet-based life for being cooped up in a ship the size of an aircraft carrier, even in the "enlightened" future?
But perhaps you envision every middle-class family having their own personal spaceship in the 23rd century. If that's the case, we have very different vision of the (relatively near) future.
