If you watch science fiction movies or television series, you may have noticed two different docking systems shown. On Star Trek: Deep Space 9 the space ship docks on the outside of the ship. It connects its door to a door on the station that extends and creates an air tight seal. That enables people to leave the ship through a hallway pressurized safely so that they don’t die from leaving the ship in space. On the television show Babylon 5 and the five movies that spun off it, the docks were quite different. In that show the ships entered the station, turned their navigation over to the station and the station parking the ship in a pressurized cargo hold that people could safely walk through. Both ideas have their pros and cons but let’s think about the internal dock theory first. The show depicted a number of problems from the pilots panicking and trying to navigate their ships in the tight areas, usually causing massive accidents that shut down those parts of the docks for days or weeks to the long hours of preventative maintenance and preservation the dock workers had to put in to keep the corrosion from space at a workable level. No other place on station, other than the hull, has so much contact with space and the changing pressures between space and livable. As a result the systems would need constant maintenance to remain operational. Star Trek: Deep Space 9 seemed to show no problems with the system other than the clumsy driver every once in a while that parked the ship wrong and screwed up that docking mechanism. However, that system left a limited number of docks, although large ships could dock straight to the station while large ships had to wait outside Babylon 5 and their crew and cargo where shuttled in by station shuttles. Also, the Babylon 5 method offered more protection to the docked ship. If Deep Space 9 was attacked, all the ships docked with it would be sitting ducks for enemy fire, although the station has a force field that encircles the ships in the station’s defense capabilities. (Is there a ship too big for that field to protect? Just a thought that never seems to be discussed on Deep Space 9 that you may want to answer before your station is attacked if you have this type of docks.)
Another type of dock system is a modern one where ships attach themselves to buoys or a certain place in the water and the people are ferried in to land in smaller boats. The practice is called “anchoring out” and happens when big boats want to pull into a harbor with waters too shallow to support the large ship.
No matter what type of docking system you decide to go with for your space station, the schedule will usually be hard to keep up, depending on your station type and location. If your station is a military outpost or a research center of some sort it may not get much traffic other than the yearly supply ship that brings new workers and fresh research material, you may not need a schedule or much in the way of docking either. If your station is a trade center for a few systems, as most stations are, you will need a schedule saying what docks are open, what docks aren’t, when they’ll be open, and when the expected ships will arrive as well as plans for if unexpected ships arrive out of schedule. It is a harbor workers worst nightmare to be in charge of that schedule and it takes a number of operators in a tower to direct and enforce the schedule at airports. Space pilots hate to wait their turn and always want to jump the line or convince people that their business is more important than those around them. Space ships can come at all hours since in space the clock on station is the only time around. The docks need to be scheduled to be at least partly open all day long which means more schedules and more complaints. Oh well, what’s a boss to do but listen to complaints at assigned jobs?
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