The cost to escape a gravity well.

The American student debt system is the beta test for space labor exploitation. The legal framework is already built. The cultural acceptance that "workers should pay for their own opportunity" is already normalized.

1. The "Launch Lien" (Mortgaging Your Body)

The Corporation doesn't see the launch cost as an operating expense. They see it as a Personal Loan to the employee.

• The Contract: "We will transport your 70kg biological mass to the L5 Mining Colony. Cost: $200,000 (Launch + Life Support overhead)."

• The Terms: "You will work off this debt at an interest rate of 5%."

• The Collateral: You.

You are literally mortgaging your own physical existence. Your body mass is the collateral. Until the debt is paid, you do not own your own position in spacetime. The Company owns your orbit.

2. The "Company Store" in a Vacuum

On Earth, "Company Towns" were abusive because the company owned the grocery store.
In Space, the Company owns The Air.

This makes the debt trap inescapable.

• You earn a salary.

• But the Company deducts:

  • The Launch Loan payment.

  • The Oxygen Fee.

  • The Water Recycling Fee.

  • The Radiation Shielding Rent.

Because the Company has a monopoly on your survival, they can price these utilities exactly high enough to ensure you never quite pay off the principal.
You are treading water. You are working just to buy the right to breathe for another day, while the Launch Debt hangs over you forever.

3. The "No Quit" Clause

On Earth, if you hate your job, you can walk away. You might be hungry, but gravity is free. Air is free.
In Space, Physics forbids you from quitting.

• If you quit, you lose your bunk and your air ration.

• You cannot "walk home." Home is 400,000 km away and at the bottom of a gravity well.

• A return ticket costs another $28,000 on top of what you still owe for the trip up (plus heat shielding).

This creates a class of workers with Zero Leverage.
The Space-Born can quit; they have friends, they have resources, they are "native."
The Earth-Import is a prisoner of the vacuum. They have to do the dangerous, dirty, high-radiation jobs because the alternative is the airlock.

4. The Caste System

This creates a rigid two-tier society:

• The Solvents (Space-Born):
  They own their own mass. They can travel cheaply. They act as the management, the pilots, the engineers. They are the "Citizens" of the colony.

• The Debtors (Earth-Born):
  They are "imported biological machinery." They are legally distinct from citizens because their mass is technically the property of the corporation that paid the shipping. They are the "Indentured."

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