Fancier habitats can wait until we've got enough infrastructure up there that bulk delivery of water to LEO costs less than fancy bottled water on the ground. Ten-meter-thick ice slabs on all sides could make ambient radiation, meteor risks, etc. as low - and as idiot-proof - as they are under earth's atmosphere, at which point it might actually start to make sense to raise a family, rather than merely surviving the tour like a submarine or oil rig.
Since one of the limiting factors is angular velocity, a longer radius is helpful, but that radius doesn't all have to be under atmosphere like the Vast artificial gravity station. Separating the Vast proposal into two halves joined by a tether (well, a web of tethers, perhaps) would allow for a much gentler rotation, and also mean that the gravity varied much less over each half, vertically.
Why couldn't they connect two modules with a cable and set them cartwheeling around their common center of mass? Rather than building a rigid wheel?
They can and they should. https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/artificialgrav.php#tumblingpigeon Take a pair of Starships, add an off-the-shelf towing winch to the nosecone (with some tweaks to make sure it works in vacuum), you're done.
Fancier habitats can wait until we've got enough infrastructure up there that bulk delivery of water to LEO costs less than fancy bottled water on the ground. Ten-meter-thick ice slabs on all sides could make ambient radiation, meteor risks, etc. as low - and as idiot-proof - as they are under earth's atmosphere, at which point it might actually start to make sense to raise a family, rather than merely surviving the tour like a submarine or oil rig.
Since one of the limiting factors is angular velocity, a longer radius is helpful, but that radius doesn't all have to be under atmosphere like the Vast artificial gravity station. Separating the Vast proposal into two halves joined by a tether (well, a web of tethers, perhaps) would allow for a much gentler rotation, and also mean that the gravity varied much less over each half, vertically.