>>11014698>>11017283Essentially, actual O'Neill cylinders are not shielded properly and is of the wrong shape for stable spinning for creating artificial gravity. They have windows, which you can not have for a space colony, in the manner they are displayed in the original O'Neill cylinder design. Real space colonies, those not having cancer issues due to poor shielding, will be more like caves. That is, thick shielding and no windows. Hollowing out an asteroid or the like, to take advantage of its mass for shielding could work, so long as the Roche limit isn't exceeded if you are spinning it for artificial gravity.
Even during the time of O'Neill cylinders first design, we had all the information needed to show they could not be used for colonies. They are strictly popsci-fi fodder. O'Neill proposed 3 colony designs. I'm not sure why the cylinder design is so well proliferated amount popsci proponents. O'Neill's torus colony design ("Island 2," [aka, "Stanford torus," version of a, "von Braun wheel,"] in, "The High Frontier," book) is much better, though it too has its flaws. Even a Bernal sphere ("Island 1" in the book) is better than the cylinders.
Regardless, most of these designs have paltry shielding for Lagrangian point orbits.
