I think you are overestimating ease of building and living in space habitats as opposed to living on planet surfaces. If I were to guess, I'd say that any signi

I think you are overestimating ease of building and living in space habitats as opposed to living on planet surfaces. If I were to guess, I'd say that any significant and detectable space habitats will be preceded by extensive colonization to nearby stars. Though now I'm oversimplifying space travel instead. I guess this problem is so complex that we can't even estimate orders of magnitude correctly.