You need to lift that tonnage into space.

That payload was based on a ground launch, that's kind of the whole point of the Orion.

We don't have cryogenic technology.

We don't have the technology to build hermetically sealed domed cities, so what's your point?

Once you arrive at your destination, if the planet isn't habitable all you've managed to do is transport a bunch of "Meat Popsicles", to use your terminology. I guess any unfrozen, surviving crew can use them for snacks.

This is an idealized situation, realistically you would bring along equipment necessary for mining and refueling in case the voyage had to be prolonged along with the other supplies necessary if the planet was indeed habitable.

You also have to take into account the complete lack of experience with interstellar travel. If something goes wrong on the trip you're fucked.

The starship would still have a better chance as we can build 3 of them for every domed city while storing 6 times the number of people.

I really don't see how any of that invalidates my argument so you're either thick or just trolling.

Let's take it down to brass tacks. 8,000,000 tonnes in a starship compared to one city the size of New York covered by 1cm thick glass (1,212,114,384m^2 * 25kg per m^2 of glass) which would equal 30,302,859.6 tonnes in glass alone and that's using a flat plane of glass and not a dome as you propose. To take it further, if we suppose that the starship has an ideal situation as well carrying its maximum payload of 4,880,000 tonnes and say all of that is used for cryogenically frozen survivors of our burned out Earth each weighing 90kg or 0.09 tonnes, henceforth know as Meat Popsicles, we see that each starship could carry 54,222,222 Meat Popsicles compared to New York's measly 8,175,000. The tonnage per person for the starship would be 0.1475 tonnes or 147.5kg and the tonnage per person for Dome New York would be 3.7067 tonnes or 3,706.7kg, a factor of 25 larger!