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The whole premise of the book is returning to earth, but The 100 starts out in the way you're wanting including multigenerational space stations and resource limitations.
John Varley's 8 Worlds books (pre- and post-reboot) have had to colonize the rocks of the Solar system, tho they're not that technical, and he rarely moves past the Moon. Also Gaea (Titan, Wizard, Demon) has an extremely alien habitat; there are other Gaea creatures, just the protagonist one is crazy but also Human-friendly.
Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky is about life on STL, multi-generation starships.
Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix is mostly set in habitats, asteroid mining, and Martian terraforming, but also a very alien hive.
- NEVER BORN. “You mean we all came from Earth?” said Nikolai, unbelieving.
“Yes,” the holo said kindly. “The first true settlers in space were born on Earth—produced by sexual means. Of course, hundred of years have passed since then. You are a Shaper. Shapers are never born.”
“Who lives on Earth now?”
“Human beings.”
“Ohhhh,” said Nikolai, his falling tones betraying a rapid loss of interest.
Check out A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martin and it's sequel.
Great book (author's last name is spelled Martine), but though a hunk of people are on a space station I don't think it goes into as much detail on making that work as OP is asking for - at the time of the story they'd been there for generations.
Surprised no one has mentioned The Expanse series. A ton of world building in very different kinds of environments. Space stations, small ships, big ships, generation ships, asteroids, moons, planets.
The environments are well thought out in how the residents would need to adapt
Cibola Burn especially was really cool with the world building. Things that you don't really hear of in other novels or even think of like the fact that alien plant life would be completely inedible to us are dealt with in detail.
It was the first thing I thought of but I thought Earth was still too viable for OP in the first few books, plus the science isn't The Martian level hard.
Maybe have a look at The Long Winter Trilogy by A.G. Riddle (available at kindle unlimited)
ANOTHER series I just remembered and highly recommend is the Unincorporated Man series. I think there are 4-5 books in the series. Pretty good IMHO. Similar to The Expanse, it's the Inners vs the Belters, and explores personal liberty and person hood from the perspective of owning "shares" of yourself like a company.
The conflict is awesome, and two military strategy geniuses duke it out in a Legends of the Galactic Heroes sort of way--one has all the resources and latest tech, the other is scrappy and has to deal with extreme resources shortages. Awesome story.
I've come to believe that once we seriously get into Space, there will come a point where "Planets" are not our primary residence at all.
I feel like O'Neal Cylinders have the advantage of a controlled environment and the lack of a gravity well hindering further exploration.
Frank Herberts "WorShip" (aka Pandora Sequence) series should fit the bill. At the very least the first two books, 'Destination: Void' and 'The Jesus Incident'.
The basic premise goes something like:
Humanity shot off into space to find another planet to live on. To survive the journey serious advanced AI needs to be created. AI shenanigans ensue. Humans are dumped on a super hostile planet, highly unfit for human life. As one of humanities last lifelines the AI demands to be worshipped as a god.
My suggestion will spoil a bit of the ending so I'm putting it in a spoiler tag.
3 Body Problem
In the third book it very much meets this criteria and I think has some fantastic ideas I'd love to see expanded on
There is little hard scifi in the 3 Body problem. And nothing of what the OP asked about.
You don't think so? I thought it did.
Unfolding proton as a fundamental particle is wrong. Protons are made up of 3 quarks. Quantum teleportation doesn't enable ftl communication. Ftl engines. Higher dimensions. Collapsing dimensions. Pocket universe.
There is a chapter about building realistic space stations in the shadow of Jupiter and two realistic space ships one of which goes right into the fantasy realm of higher dimensions.
Maybe 50 pages out of 500 are hard scifi.
I was sold on the first stuff being real... I guess that makes it good fiction. I know there was a lot that wasn't but I thought since OP was looking for inspiration that some of the stuff here would help...?!