Bed logging is currently buggered, I believe... Shame, as it used to work pretty well
most of the time - Apart from those occasions when you and your ship would spawn inside the sun or beneath a planet surface
Yes, hailing ATC is enough to set your spawn point.
@Columbo
Yeah, 3.14 has a new flight model and weapon balance/combat system and some of the keyboard shortcuts have changed. I'm not a big fan of what it's done to some of my favorite ships tbh, although it will see further changes and refinements.
All you had to do was call ATC in the usual way and press R to fire up your ship once you'd found your way to the space port and into the cockpit. Basic flight controls are still the same
As for Orison... Pretty it is, but it's not the most intuitive place to navigate for the first time. They could've done a better job in that regard and I'm not surprised it took you a while.
Gameplay content wise, the new-ish reputation system and mission variety + progression for both legal and criminal paths is a fair bit more in depth and varied than it used to be. It's just that currently, ship based combat is a lot more dependent on multi-crew/multi-ship with the new flight model, balance changes and turret buffs.
Either way, I guess your time constraints make it a bit of a no-go, regardless. Hope you have better luck with SQ42 whenever that happens.