Have been trying to figure out how to dock with the cargo hold in 3D space (including yaw, pitch, and roll). Haven't been able to come up with anything hi-tech. I suppose a laser guided automatic docking system can take control of the ship and perfectly align it to the cargo hold in any position under any weather conditions. But someone else will have to design it : )
Trying to be practical, all I could come up with is using mooring lines and winches to "pull" the ship into place (the same as ocean ships). The Precariat would float close to the cargo hold, then drop lines to connect at various points.
With the mooring lines connected, the cargo hold (or the ship) could winch itself into position. Once in position, the ship & cargo hold would "lock" together. The bottom of the ship contains a grid of I-beams that are integrated into the ship's structure.
Need a structural engineer to do the math, but the largest I-Beam I could find was 24" that weighs ~120lbs per foot. I'm not sure how many beams you would need to lift 500 tons, but made a grid of beams totaling 1786 feet. Which added 107 tons of weight to the ship(!!!). I couldn't find any graphene I-beams. Can someone calculate how much a beam can "lift" per span (ten 95' spans shown) and how many are needed to lift a fully loaded cargo hold?
For the locking mechanism, all I could think was to grab onto the i-beams. Once winched into place, the cargo hold would literally "grab" the ship and hold on (watch yellow clamps at the top of the image).
Hopefully detaching the cargo will be much easier. Just disconnect and float away (after adjusting lift/ballast to compensate for losing the cargo weight).
Cameron