I forget how I registered. I've been away a long time. Anyway as to the Bebop idea.
I think the idea is great, and have some ideas but don't know if they can be done. The first is simply change ship graphics to include the ships from the series, change the background music to more blues/jazz/bebop style midi or wav files. Include something like the bounty hunter plug-ins, and add some mission strings.
that would be a simpler version and it is the universe you can do it your way. Mineing and what not between jobs.
If you want to get more into it you can make it so the missions you get are like, Find Steve- last seen in this system. You go to the system and enter the bar where you are contacted by an informant who tells you where he is, then you get him. Two part missions. Then one of the mission strings leads you to hunt a hacker on a planet and then prove 'his' innocence. Once that is done you add the hackker to your ship outfit (if it's possible make it transferable between ships) and those two part mission become one parters in most cases where the hacker can find them skipping the informant. Make The sword fish and the other small craft purchasable as fighter (like the ability to purchase military craft, so not everybody has one) so you could similate all the time they broke down or got damaged in a fight without perminantly loosing them. Maybe you can find the bebop or a ship like it as a derilict and board her. She would be an average ship but with the adding of a fighter bay for each of the smaller ships, armor and other upgrades it will become better (but the ship was never really top end).
I don't know if it is possible to make the gates similar to planets that you contact one for clearance and then jump. Mid gate stops sound cool but that effectively doubles the systems unless you do it in only a few cases. And since the whole series takes place in the solar system gate go directly to different places like earth and the moon, or all of jupiters moon, but midgates go between orbits (so venus to earth is two or three jumpgates. There are also Dark Gates mention in the Manga (gate that are hidden and offer shortcuts but are controlled by syndicates. These would be cool but would all need to have midgates.
I think the way I'd like to see it done is, set it in the Bebop universe but in the future. The Gates now reach other systems. There are syndicates and dark gates. (Many midgates) Ships from the series. Bounty hunting. and leave the rest to the players. Maybe some sounds from the series (especially edward talking). And maybe a mission string to find the famous bebop (Jet and Faye frozen, spike in stasis and in the hands of the syndicate and what about ED and Ein? Could the crew be brought back together?). Big Shot is back on the air in the form of mission terminals for hunters only.
heck I'd devote a entire mac to this game if I could have this and a few other plugins to switch between.
Catch you later space cowboy