6.44 from its spin. The others would be applied loads at the bearings. These would add some support structure to the shield and thus complicate its fabrication. Finally, in the opinion of the ES group, docking cargo to a shield spinning between .24 and .36 RPM would be difficult and the design would therefore need a despun docking facility. VI.5.7: Shield Option Decision: Unfortunately, the study group could not make a decision between shield options on engineering grounds. This would have required detailed designs and analyses of the open and closed bearing systems which would have taken too much time. The ES group picked the despun shield option described in Section VI.5.5. It was felt that the study group's abilities could do that simpler design more justice since there was not enough time to deal properly with the mechanical engineering problems of the wheel bearing and the electromagnetic physics problems of the electromagnetic bearing. The hull-shield spacing was left at 5 meters. VI.5.8: Docking System: After choosing the despun shield and the open bearing design, the ES group proposed a docking system for the colony. Docking criteria are listed in Table 6.1. The suggested docking design is shown in Figure 6.19. Attached to the despun shield would be a trusswork supporting four docking pads. Cargo containers would be docked to these while awaiting processing. To move cargo from a container into the hull, a transfer pod would first dock to the container and the cargo would be loaded into it. The transfer pod would then move to the shield's axis of symmetry. There a spin/despin ring would extend mechanical linkages inward to the transfer pod and spin it up to the spin rate of the hull. Then the linkage would retract and the pod would dock to the hull's docking port. The cargo would be brought in through an airlock. The procedure would be reversed to move cargo out. VI.6: FIRST OVERALL CONFIGURATION VI.6.1: General Remarks: This section presents a brief review of the overall configuration at this point in the design process.
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