Absolutely not. There is still significant gravity in space - it falls by inverse-square law, after all. In LEO the force of gravity is practically undiminished. For a "long" structure you'll soon find out that vertical does exist, because that's the way the long axis of that structure will be oriented. Look up "gravity gradient stabilization".
Of course that discribes the axis toward/away from the Earth. I don't know if there is any preferred direction beyond that, but it would surprise me if extended objects don't feel some force related to the direction of their orbits. Basically I'm sure of up/down, and have a feeling that fore/aft can be differentiated from port/starboard. I'd have to agree that North/South/East/West are meaningless - at least for electrically neutral structures.
You could look at them as shills, or you could look at them as putting their money where their mouths are. The saw a threat and are doing what they can within our system to handle it.
So when government does it, it's either inefficient or a boondoggle, but when a company does it, attempting to inform about the threat they're trying to solve makes them a shill. As long as they're above-board about their position, and clear and honest with their science, I see no problem.
By "right school" I didn't mean Ivy or anything, I meant internet-connected. Though the likes of MIT or CMU aren't cheap, either. Since I don't remember the year, I don't remember how widespread internet acces was at that point.
Or to put it another way, did Slashdot come before or after AOL let the unwashed masses onto the internet?
You don't have to be rich for that, just early. Being at the right school at the right time and having an account with internet access would have been sufficient. What year did you get your 3-digit UID?
Years back, in the days of much higher inflation, my brother said he fully expected to be a millionaire one of these days, and he also expected to spend something like $100 of that money to get a hamburger at McDonalds.
I simply don't know what to say.
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.