Something I don't quite understand with Holograms.

In Series VII Episode 5, "Blue," after Rimmer becomes Ace, Lister kind of misses him. Kryten creates a roller coaster ride in the AR suite that he calls the "Rimmer Experience." He created it from Rimmer's memories, and shows it to Lister so Lister can remember Rimmer, and what a smeghead he is. Lister stops missing him pretty quickly.

I love Rimmer because he's so annoying, and hilarious in all his annoying glory.
I don't really hate Ace, but I'm glad he's only in a couple of episodes. He is overly cocky, and that just doesn't fit with the Rimmer I'm used to. If I saw him any more often, I would hate him.

The books are wonderful, I found them very funny. I've only read the first two, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, and Better Than Life.
The first one, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, explains how Lister got to be working on Red Dwarf in the first place. It also explains how the cats evolved. After the point where the show starts, with the radiation leak, the book just uses the plots from the shows. This is true for Better Than Life, too. However, the shows aren't in the same order, and they all connect together instead of being separate episodes. Each problem they have snowballs them into another one.
There are two other books that I haven't read. The first two were written by the Grant Naylor team, but for these two, they split up. Each wrote one, The Last Human by Doug Naylor, and Backwards by Rob Grant. I think that The Last Human is generally considered the third installment, Backwards is the fourth.

I think I found my copies at a used bookstore, but it's been a while since I bought them, and I've bought so many books since, that it's hard for me to remember just now. They look like they've been read a lot, but that could just be from me.

That's in the first episode, "The End". The crashing noises weren't meant as literal consequences of Rimmer falling through Cat but just as comedic effect and nothing more.

Besides, if the Red Dwarf production crew made sure everything in the series was scientifically accurate and had "all its ducks in a row" continuity-wise, it just wouldn't be RD; they leave that to shows like Star Trek and such. In other words, your saying "the show is a bit shoddy" is right on the mark; the writers and producers intended the continuity "mistakes" to be in the finished product. After all, doesn't it seem highly appropriate that the production crew will "cause" as many screw-ups as the in-show crew does? lol

Don't watch Beavis and Butthead expecting Kubrick and don't listen to Beethoven expecting ICP.

Watch Smeg-outs. They got tonnes of letters about the shows inconsistancies (and there's hundreds...) Kryten just gave a random fob-off answer (something like "if you ever see something strange in the show.. it's because of space mutants") because frankly.. they don't care. The important thing to the writers was making people laugh and maintaining a basic story line, which they did fantastically.