Once I found a chief landed on a planet in a grey anarchy system, close to a guardian site.
I know what you mean. Hillary 2020 I think is a carrier. There's also one named "Donald Trump" somewhere. In this case, you can select the filter options in the left panel and check everything but carriers. It's not a big loss.
In the case of "Reagan's legacy" (that must be a federal station) you can find why is called that way in the Federation Lore.
There are also some excellent lore videos by Drew Wagar on YouTube. Hopefully knowing this stuff will give you a context.
Paints is actually good if you manage to find two overlapping hotspot.
You can check the max cargo space of both ships, when all optional compartment possible are fitted with cargo racks. The Imperial Cutter has a max cargo of 794t while type 9 has 790t.
Statistically, the Cutter is better but it costs more and you need a very high Imperial rank to be able to buy it.
I suggest you start with type 9 only to switch to a Cutter when you have both money and rank to afford it.
Yeah, generally is a good combat ship, but the Vulture is better in this field.
It's Raxxla
Well, if you go to the right places you'll get some awesome rewards from delivery missions (check Sothis Mining). If by "deliver stuff" you mean being a merchant the old fashion way, then no: you will need a very big ship to make a million out of a single buy-and-sell run.