The idea there's a social dissonance between the Upper Decks and Lower Decks seems weirdly arbitrary given they're all desperately necessary to run the ship. Then you have to think about vital jobs like garbage men, farmers, and other groups which don't get much respect in our world. There's also the fact this is from the 1960s where communism was horrific, so OF COURSE they want to establish an "Elite" to separate the upper class from the working class.
Six hundred people seem a small number to have such vicious cliques and politicking as Viondra is shown to engage in. Then you remember the sort of pettiness which goes on in stuff like high school. The smallness and their environment would actually encourage the pettiness as well as grandstanding they engage in.
While the project is about geniuses in a closed environment and psychics, you could also get a lot of information about generation ships and how machines for them would function from a simulation. It would also serve as a test of the behaviour of the crew and passengers to see whether a generation ship is feasible at all. The U.S.S Ascension is probably the most scientifically useful experiment ever performed by NASA. Though NASA didn't do it.
The half-a-dozen Stewardesses/prostitutes seems a surprisingly large number for such an environment. Then, again, having a guild of brothels seems like it'd be probably one of the first things set up when the sheer staggering ennui of the environment sets in. The philandering, too, though that may be Values Dissonance from it being the Space Sixties.
