If you are using Starship or New Glenn and comparing doing ambition things in LEO to going to the Moon or Mars you are looking at launching maybe 15 total Starships to put a 100 tons on another planetary body [1] or launching one Starship to put 100 tons in LEO, that is, 15x lower costs.
The showy space hotel might be impractical but it is more practical than a Mars or even Moon colony.
O'Neill was pessimistic about how much rotation people can take
his kind of colony could be scaled down to a much smaller structure than he thought, you could not get the nitrogen from the moon to fill a large airspace cylinder at L5 the way O'Neill thought but a baby Bernal sphere in LEO needs just 15 Starship loads for the atmosphere which is possible.
[1] perhaps you don't reuse the last Starship and instead use it on the site
PaulHoule•4mo ago
The showy space hotel might be impractical but it is more practical than a Mars or even Moon colony.
O'Neill was pessimistic about how much rotation people can take
https://nss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Space-Settlement-...
his kind of colony could be scaled down to a much smaller structure than he thought, you could not get the nitrogen from the moon to fill a large airspace cylinder at L5 the way O'Neill thought but a baby Bernal sphere in LEO needs just 15 Starship loads for the atmosphere which is possible.
[1] perhaps you don't reuse the last Starship and instead use it on the site