So as far as I can tell the Dpad is not used at all when floating and sputtering in space...so why not make them map to frequent destinations like they are used for emotes?

Up: Tower/other social zones
Right: weekly events (esp when Iron banner is out)
Down: daily events
Left: user defined

Do you mean to bring them up as destinations or to just go automatically? Because let me tell you: if it's the latter, then no way in hell. Pressing this direction when you meant to press that, dropping a controller(which I do all the time), trying to psych the game out by pressing the whole pad, all that stuff. Honestly, I don't see much of a function with this--if you're in Orbit, you can just use the control sticks to go wherever you want.