Obviously, we are not going to see huge hotels coming up at the Near-Earth Asteroid region any time soon. The problems discussed elsewhere on these web pages are all serious, and as long as we must depend on Earth-launched materials, nothing very large can be built in Space. Until a healthy Space-based economy is functioning, there is no particular reason to build large radiation shields and habitats - there is no demand for housing there.

Now let us look at the technical realism here. The criterion usually used by most people to assess the practicality and realism of a given concept is:

"Has this been done before?" No, not exactly this, but in developing the concept we have sought and found proof of the feasibility of the key components.

• We have shown the formation of complex-shaped walls of many kinds of materials in microgravity flight experiments.
• Others have shown that nano-particles can be pushed, pulled and positioned using laser beams.
• JPL has recently announced experiments using steady laser and microwave beams, to push sails - showing that beams of sufficient energy for that application are already in existence.

In 1974, a signal was sent from Arecibo into deep space. The dish was ~305 meters. It transmitted ~20 trillion watts in an omni-directional broadcast (2*10^13 W). It was sent for 169 sec. The frequency was at 2380 MHz and the equivalent wavelength was ~12.61 cm.
 
courtesy of the NAIC - Arecibo Observatory, a facility of the NSF.Photo by David Parker.
See http://www.naic.edu/about/photos/aoviews.htm