This makes a lot of sense. You can melt the asteroid with reflected sunlight, and then build the O’Neill cylinder inside from the melted material. This lets the asteroid block impacts and radiation so you don’t need to build as strong a cylinder wall. Then you can get energy using the same solar mirrors that you hollowed out the asteroid with, using simple Stirling engines to power the generators.
This makes a lot of sense. You can melt the asteroid with reflected sunlight, and then build the O’Neill cylinder inside from the melted material. This lets the asteroid block impacts and radiation so you don’t need to build as strong a cylinder wall. Then you can get energy using the same solar mirrors that you hollowed out the asteroid with, using simple Stirling engines to power the generators.
I think the super-structure the crew interacted with in Rendezvous with Rama was an O’Neill cylinder, or something resembling an O’Neill cylinder.