The first example of what people would later call a habitate space station was the Soviet Union's Mir satellite first launched in 1986. Continously inhabited until it was destroyed in 2014 by hard-line Soviet forces when its crew backed the "wrong side" during the Second Soviet Civil War, it was the first permanent space station destroyed by the actions of mankind's weapons.
         Its legacy lived on though, and when mankind began moving to space under the Western Alliance's hand, permanent space habitats became their first stop, and for some their home for life. When the invention of the jump drive allowed mankind to begin colonizing the far-flung virgin planets, most observers predicted the demise of the space habitat. Indeed, the colonization of previously inaccessible worlds left little demand for the massive space habitats of the time. But the proliferation of orbiting factories and shipyards over the literal millennia of our presence in space created a new demand for inexpensive housing near the factories that would not require a daily trip to a nearby planet for the workers.
         Most of these stations hold between 5 and 15,000 people, but both larger and smaller examples exist. At C.M.O. 26 in the Lyran Commonwealth, for example, a single large habitat houses 50,000 military and civilian personnel, making it the largest manmade construct in the Inner Sphere. The Taurian Concordat's Sparta Arcology is even larger, but many do not even consider it to be a space station. Like all modern Arcologies, it is built around a jump core, and periodically jumps to a new system where its people sell their wares to the (new) locals.
         The largest habitat ever constructed was the massive O’Neil station. This cylindrical habitat measured 7 kilometers long by 1 kilometer wide and housed more than 1 million people. However, this engineering marvel was destroyed during the war following the Amaris Coup. The station came under attack by Rim Worlds forces, who chose to destroy the facility with a tactical nuclear weapon rather than battle the Cameron troops defending the station.
         Many other habitats met similar fates during the Succession Wars and Jihad or were simply abandoned when maintaining the vast structures became economically unfeasible. Most of the survivors were deep inside a major nation, though the newer once built in the last quarter century can be found anywhere that humans travel.
         Listed here is an example of the largest class of habitat in standard use in the Human Sphere.