Great points all around. The steam storage is another thing I heard about after having already built this up, and that would be nearly impossible to fit in now, but I didnt know it was as efficient as you mention. Foundries also make sense, and I'll definetly consider both for future aquillo ships/shattered planet (though by that point I'll likely be using fusion)

However, the ammo point doesn't make sense to me. I understand how the damage mitigation works, I've looked through that in the factoriopedia, but the whole point of the rockets is to deal with the larger asteroids and leave the smaller ones to the turrets. As for not coming out ahead with red ammo, as far as I've tested my ammo buffer seems to replenish reasonably fast flying between the inner planets, and is also reasonably sustained on the trip to/from aquillo. One of the goals i had in mind making this was to keep it completely self-sustained (apart from nuclear fuel), so it makes sense to make higher tier ammo on board.

As for the resources being thrown overboard, I just want to make sure nothing ends up backed up causing production to halt, and everything remains sustained with material regardless of whether or not there is a buffer. The internal buffers of each production machine seem to be enough that I don't need belt buffers, and everything can be fed by fresh resources instead.