I heard about this a while back. I think it's an interesting idea. Sort of a gamification of space exploration. Though assuming they got people there, once the novelty wears off (let's be generous and say 5-10 years) then what? You have a bunch of people living in a very inhospitable place, with no real way to return to Earth and limited capability to manufacture their own technology. They'd need regular supply drops from Earth, and even assuming a super low delta-v trajectory for the supply drops, that's a significant price tag.
I'm more excited about something like
asteroid mining. Once you can demonstrate a ROI beyond LEO, it opens the door to space commercialization, with lots of possible knock on effects. If there's any stronger driving motivation for humans beyond curiosity it's money. I'd expect colonization to start emerging as a natural consequence of AI beyond kinda dumb and light speed lag making remote control impractical. One or two $100 billion mining expeditions ruined because of light speed lag more than incentivizes a permanent human presence beyond LEO.