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By this definition of "population frontier," I question whether there's ever been a population frontier. No country on Earth today is self-sufficient, and no near-term contemplated space colony would be self-sufficient, either. It would be ridiculous to say "because your space colony intends to watch the BBC, it is doomed to failure."
Now, I definitely see where you are coming from. But I don't think the proper metric is "self-sufficiency," it is probably self-sufficiency in housing, food, water, and power. If a space colony starts somewhere, it will be reasonable to believe that software, entertainment, and microchips can be imported from Earth.
It is also not correct to assume that a space colony must be a closed-cycle bottled ecosystem, particularly if you include colonizing other planets as part of "space colonization." The moon, Mars, and asteroids all have water ice. If I thought that a true closed-cycle bottled ecosystem was an integral part of space colonization, I would be much less inclined to raise my eyebrows at the "physics rule out space colonization" – a true closed-cycle ecosystem, it seems to me be very close to an insurmountable challenge at any plausible scale, but in any likely space colonization scenario you're likely going to be able to import (and export) a lot of matter from your ecosystem pretty trivially, which means it is not closed-cycle.
My problem with this argument is that it does not predict past actions; therefore, it is hard to believe it is a good guide for future actions. The International Space Station cost billions and in terms of economic efficiency, it would have been more cost-effective to cash the money and burn it to boil water to create steam to drive a turbine and sell the electricity. But because humans are not driven entirely by cost efficiency, humans have been in space continuously for 25 years.
This is not to say that I am saying that space colonization is inevitable. I just don't find these arguments that it is impossible persuasive.
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