>I gave up (for now) on the project because I could
>not reconcile a spin habitat liner with docking with a spin station. Will
>probably have to settle with a non-spin docking portion of the station.
Most SF that I recall reading that uses spin gravity handles this problem
by having a counter-rotating 'core', so that in the outside frame of
reference there is a non-rotating portion of both station and ship, and you
perform end-on (ship-end-to-station-end) docking with only the non-rotating
portions coming into mutual contact. Passengers and cargo are also
transferred through this non-rotating portion, in zero-g. Some complex
mechanism to enable transfer between the rotating and non-rotating portions
(a "gravity lock", analogous to an airlock) is necessary.
End to end docking limits it to a single ship docked at each end of the station. If you are off axis then you have to add the Coriolis effect (counter rotating) of both the ship and station. With the out ward adding the effective gravity, the inward subtracting, and at 90 degrees getting a significant side force for ships with a spin ring (lab ship). This would work differently for a ship with modules on an extension, those could be locked in a position to match station gravity (Babalon5).
Having the dock in zero-G (non-rotation) would solve this but would be uncomfortable to landlubber passengers. This also moves many of the station services to the rotation section away from the docks.
This problem goes away once grav tech is developed. Very small window for some societies, long one for others. (T5 lists grav tech as one of the technologies that some races/societies just cannot grasp.) I just want to have this small window defined before moving on with the project.
An alternative that I have also seen is that ship and station rotate at the
same angular speed, but in opposite directions. When the ship approaches
the station docking port, they are rotationally motionless _relative to
each other_. In this model, passenger and cargo transfer is still in zero-g
(or micro-g), but no "gravity lock" is required.
(An example of the latter appears in the novel _Triple Detente_, by Piers
Anthony - human and kazo ships rotate in opposite directions, and transfers
between them are via nose-to-nose docking. A good read, even if the author
has exhibited some distasteful and questionable proclivities in some of his
most popular works.)