Except that the new lands Columbus discovered had air, had water, had food, had people, and had an economically viable method of mineral (gold) recovery.
There is no food, air, water etc in low earth orbit as well. If we could get to the moon in a couple of days 50 years ago it should be easy to send supply rockets to a lunar base today. I just find it strange that we did something incredible in 1969 and some 50 years later we are in awe of a space station that is some 250 miles away from the surface.