Comment by bee_rider
In the colonial era they were mostly colonizing already populated areas. The land was mostly more hospitable than the ship because
* Humans evolved to live on Earth
* In many cases there were people to trade with or steal already tended land from
We could look at Arctic expeditions I guess. They mostly didn’t colonize for some reason (despite the region being wildly more hospitable than anywhere off Earth).
I think we can both agree that the reality is any sort of off-world colonization is going to be unpleasant and difficult beyond imagine with no simple solutions. I think we are much closer to being able to construct conformable habitats on other celestial bodies than we are to being able to make megastructures in outer space. Long term artificial structures will probably be the way to go, but I think to get there we will need to be able to setup base camps on nearby celestial bodies.