Sillychris

Uranium cannonball would fall quicker in an atmosphere. Greater density=greater acceleration with drag present. If not convinced in the case of a uranium and iron cannonball, throw a nerf ball into the experiment and see if you are convinced then.

Air drag is proportional to cross sectional area which is proportional to r^2 Gravitational force is proportional to mass which is proportional to volume which is proportional to r^3 r^3 goes up faster than r^2 with increasing r, thus gravitational force goes up faster than drag force in your scenario. Yes, the larger ball would fall faster.

I vote antimatter drive. Nuclear reactions convert <1% of the fuel into energy. Matter-Antimatter annihilation converts 100% of the fuel into energy. That's 2-3 orders of magnitude improvement in efficiency! Plus antimatter was in the final episode of Exo-Squad which is probably the best kid's cartoon in history.

Yes, it would take enormous energy and yes, it would take technology we haven't thought of, but there is nothing in physics that says you can't rearrange nuclear matter at will. Ultimately, it's an engineering problem. Your Santa Claus machine is possible, except... You are limited by quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. It would be impossible to obtain an exact particle by particle code to replicate an object because the details of individual particles are fuzzy and do not exist as exact values. The reason things seem so concrete to us at a macroscopic level is because the quantum fuzziness gets ironed out by Avogadro's number. That being said, I am convinced you could get pretty close. Bucket of chicken from air? It doesn't need to be exact. I'm ok if a few thousand protons are in the wrong place on my drumstick. Besides, I wouldn't be able to tell. I'm macroscopic!

The answer is simple: We'll give you homes if you give us your ship. Next step, get on the tv and announce "I need 250000 volunteers to give up their homes in exchange for a one way trip to SPAAAAAAAACE!"

I'm going platform jumping... mario style!

Just make your final stage the one with the primary command module. Then your automated lifter plane can just die.