Comment More to the point (Score 1) 256
What the hell would be the point of an orbiting colony?
The expense is astronomical (er, sorry...), the logistics are mind-boggling, and the huge technological barriers to colonizing another planet are flippantly brushed away with as-yet nonexistent sci-fi solutions. There's nothing to be gained by having humans living in orbit of another planet. None of the hinted-at scientific discoveries, no miraculous breakthroughs in materials science have occurred, nothing. The great advances made in astronomy and space exploration since the moon landing have been achieved with unmanned probes: this is the future of space exploration.
Sending people up there is not beneficial in relation to its extremely high cost: hell, if huge amounts of gold were as close as orbiting the earth, there's no possible way it could even be cost-effective to retrieve it.