It always reminds me of the RAMA object, created by Arthur C. Clarke.

The first three Babylon Stations were destroyed by sabotage, the forth was comandeered by Valen--who was really Jeffrey Sinclair--to serve as a base to fight The Shadows, or Army of Darkness at the beginning of time.

The chronological conundrums created by this were unending, and unendingly fascinating.

Also reminds me of the Dyson Sphere in Star Trek: The Next Generation, though in TNG it is a sphere, not a cylinder, and it contains a star, and so is much, much bigger. But the core notion, of an enclosed environment, self-contained, in space is the same.