Critical time

At the risk of
getting lynched, nothing dates faster than futurism; & the massive
construction vision of the classical O'Neill colony is so much a part of the
postApollo bigger is brighter school that returning to the concept in 2000
as we did seemed strangely quaint. There's so much construction &
transportation required for even a small colony to be established - & no way
for the colony to achieve even nominal self sufficiency in the short term -
that with current & nearterm technologies, the concept simply isn't a viable
alternative. Your points are good ones, but in all fairness to O'Neill, he recognized this fact well before his death, and began promoting a program of SPS construction at relatively modest Space Manufacturing Facilities, with large, Earthlike space habitats coming only much later in the program.