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How do the inhabitants of an O'Neill space cylinder generate enough ongoing net economic value to make living there viable in the long run? If not, then they would be a continuing economic drain on the sponsor and become a dispiriting orbital welfare slum with fabulous views and low G sports.

Your analogy with Mar-a-Largo is more apt than you may realize. It was built by the fabulously wealthy breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and deeded to the US government in her will. Eventually, tiring of the costly upkeep, the US government put it up for sale, half expecting that the deteriorating pile would be torn down and something new built in its place.

Then Donald Trump swooped in, buying Mar-a-Largo with an improbable plan to restore it to glory and make it an upscale club. Many thought Trump would lose badly, but he made it work quite well. As always, having a viable business plan matters as much as having a vision.

If there is a way to make the first O'Neill space cylinder pay, it would be as a combination space service station and fantastic orbital cruise ship of sorts. The business case though first requires enough manned lunar and planetary traffic to require a service station in space and enough affordable manned launch capacity to make visits and residence there plausible in economic terms.

I think that we are at least four or five decades and a lot of technology development away from that, with practical fusion power required. And when we finally build an O'Neill cylinder, there will already be permanent human settlements on the Moon and Mars that generate lots of space traffic.

What then emerges may be more like the industrial grittiness and scheming of The Expanse than a shining, utopian city in a spinning tube in space.