Regarding rotating space stations. I don't expect to see either 1.000 foot diameter spheres (or disks) or separate modules cabled together across their mutual center of mass. I think the toroidal designs we have been seeing in fiction since the 1950s are more likely. Think "wagon wheel" with some hollow spokes to a central tube, spinning around a virtual "axle".
But, if anything is spinning in space fast enough to create 1 g of artificial gravity at its edge, it will create a docking problem for space craft to connect to it. In "2001 A Space Odyssey" a big space craft comes in on the axis of rotation, spinning at the same rate as the space station. Doable, but limited to 2 spacecraft at a time. And, think about what the people on that spacecraft will experience trying to debark and make their way to the 1g wheel part of the station. The room will be spinning, literally, on the spacecraft and any tube leading from it. I expect that would be disorienting, especially when a person is not exactly on the axis of the station's spin. People who are prone to "sea sickness" would probably get a much more serious version, and it would probably come on almost instantaneously.
The other way to do it would be for the spacecraft to dock on the outside circumference of the wheel. It should not be too difficult to maneuver a spacecraft to do that - it would be like a fighter pilot doing what is a 2 g nose-up maneuver on Earth, but it would only feel like a 1 g maneuver at the space station. When aligned, the spacecraft could be mechanically clamped to the space station, much like the capsules are now connected to the ISS. But, doing that with any non-zero mass spacecraft would cause the space station to have a shift in the center of their collective masses and that would alter the way the space station spins, at least to some degree. The "gravity" inside the space station would develop a "wobble" effect.
The only way I can think of to mitigate that effect is to have a counterbalancing mass, located on the opposite side of the space station from the docking port, that could be moved to recenter the net center of mass to the physical center of the toroid of the station. Seems doable. But, I expect people inside the station would be able to tell when a spacecraft docks, without looking out through a window.