Space Travel and Governments

I was thinking about space travel, commerce, and governments. So here's some ideas I thought I'd throw out and perhaps somebody might make something of them. They may be completely useless too. It's not for me to decide.

I see four main reasons for space travel:
• Growth/colonization. This is the "First Stage" of interplanet/interstellar travel. Nothing else exists without it.
• Commerce/communication. This obviously occurs because trading to your next door neighbor provides a certain degree of profit, but trading with another nation provides a much greater wealth. Trading on the planet and system scale would provide wealth and resources off the scale of our current existence. And of course, as social animals, we like to hear news and gossip from those we don't live with.
• Travel/tourism. This has been and always will be the privilege of the wealthy. At the interplanetary and interstellar scale, the cost will be extremely high.
• Security/Military. As commerce occurs and the wealthy people of a society travel, steps must be taken to secure the space lanes and ensure that distant planets behave well. At the point where human beings can travel to the stars, it is relatively simple to annihilate a planet or population centers from space, with attacks launched from far away. Obviously great care and expense is necessary.

From these four reasons, I imagine a space-faring society that looks like the following:
• You would see colony ships. They aren't all going to new planets, but old ones, ferrying people about to where they can fit and be most useful to the society. These ships would be as cheap as possible, as they only need to travel to one destination with their human cargo roughly intact. Colonists are likely not paying much for the opportunity to travel to somewhere else. They may be skilled workers that are needed elsewhere, and on a company's private transport with the costs billed to that company.
• You would see heavy freighters that probably would never land on a planet, only docking at hub stations or small moons where cargo is split up into smaller shipments to and from the planets. They would be bare-bones efficient, and concentrate on getting the biggest bang for the buck. They would all be privately owned by supermassive corporations, as those companies would be the only ones able to afford transport on such a scale, and their profits would easily cover the high costs of interstellar travel. It is quite likely that these companies would take over the role of government between planets. In essence, government would exist on a local scale (perhaps encompassing an entire planet or system), and corporations would run the rest of the galaxy. Competition would drive efficiency and ensure that they alone could afford space travel, governments being too restricted by their taxes on a democratic (not willing to pay taxes high enough) people and their inherent inefficiencies found in every government.
• Travel and tourism would be restricted to local (planetary) levels, except for the wealthy executives that run the interstellar trade market, or otherwise profit from it. Even this would be highly restricted and unusual. For the most part, sending a data capsule or robot is cheaper and more efficient than sending a person. Virtual reality and near-orbit tourism would satisfy the vast majority of exotic vacation needs, and would be quite cheap. The cost of a hyper-transport is relatively astronomical. Those desiring true interstellar adventure can sign up for the hard life of colonization, where they pay for their transportation costs with labor.
• Any military that exists in the planet level would serve primarily in the defensive role. The costs would be very high, and the stakes even higher. A handful of nukes, asteroids, or even antimatter bombs can be launched from light years away and lay waste to a planet. The idea that hyperspace engines could be attached to such weapons causes even greater worry. It would be worth it to spend a tremendous amount of money on planetary defenses, for obvious reasons, but governments would only be able to afford it with high taxes on interstellar trade. This means lots of money, but increases the expense of interstellar travel that much more. Alternatively, the supermassive interstellar trade corporations could take the role of planetary defenders. They have a vested interest in keeping their markets annihilation-free, and they have the deep pockets to pay for nuke-protection. It seems that the ideal government in such a society would be none at all. Let the corporations take care of the big problems.

I think that what I've described is realistic, and the likely turn of events in the distant future. How many private individuals on this planet today own seaworthy vessels? How many private individuals travel to other countries or continents? If you look at commercial shipping, it is clearly dominant. Sure, we have cruise ships for people on vacation, but not many people actually can afford them. There may be some nations that can afford travel (say, the United States), but these superpowers are rare in the world. And while governments today control the seas with ships and planes, look how slowly they journey into the final frontier. Commercial satellites and space initiatives are taking over. And plenty of people complain now that government is controlled by business interests as it is. Is it unreasonable to see them taking over someday, not by military might but by wealth and influence?

So anyway, I figure there's some ideas in there worth using. Perhaps somebody can think of a small project to use them with. Complex in an intellectual way, but relatively short in terms of time to develop or play through.

The tiny shuttle pilot who chooses his own course may not be so common in the future.

Hmm. Actually, I've been working (slowly) on a small project that looks very much like that.

A couple of comments:
A universe like that, although realistic, doesn't leave much space for the player. It would be possible to fit them in by using chärs to start them off in various organizations (freighter captain, military, etc.), but it would not feel much like EV's "open-ended you-can-do-anything". Not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

And now a rambling series of thoughts on the military aspect (after all, when you get right down to it, EV is to a great extent a space combat game):
The real question about planetary defense is: How is it possible to defend against a chunk of antimatter moving at a large fraction of the speed of light?

In fact, at that speed, it doesn't even need to be antimatter. Just get an asteroid moving at that speed, and you can sterilize a planet. If you also break it up into, say, a hundred square kilometers of gravel, it would be truly impossible to stop.

Therefore, to defend a planet, you need to stop incoming rocks before they can get up to speed (which is likely to take several weeks to a couple of months, using conventional engines). This would require a large number of observation posts far from the center of the system, with the ability to launch a strike against enemies, probably without any reinforcements from the inhabited parts of the system.

This will, of course, only work if you can't use the hyper-drive to accelerate an asteroid to the speed of light. If that's possible, wars will be fought and lost in the course of hours to days, with no hope of defense. One would think that the knowledge that any war will result in the annihilation of most of the systems involved would prevent war, but probably not.

On the other hand, if the war is being fought for conquest of new, inhabitable territory, planet-sterilizing tactics will not be used. Instead, the invader will likely try to take over the space immediately surrounding the planet, and swat industrial/military installations from orbit. They would then need to occupy the planet, but that’s a problem for another post/thread/forum.

Fortunately for gameplay, this is likely to lead to relatively interesting battles, as the planet's defenders will need to bring in siege-breaking fleets from other systems, and use "close-range" weapons (anything fired from much farther out than, say, lunar orbit is more likely to hit the planet than an invading ship).

So, from the point of view of creating a plug-in like this, in my opinion it would be better for any war to be one of territorial conquest, rather than destruction of the enemy.

Edwards

This post has been edited by Edwards : 11 July 2005 - 02:27 PM

I also have a project that is something like these ideas. Obviously you don't get a fun universe before you get past your homeworld. But things like travel expenses, vulnerability of planets to long ranged attacks and so on also depend greatly on the way a particular universe is set up.

For instance in my project, ships can not maintain FTL speeds once they get so far within a solar system. So that rules out a FTL attack. Then nearly every race / government has sensor and communication technology that travel at FTL speeds, so if some sort of deadly object was thrown at a planet at a high speed, a ship or nuke could be sent to intercept it.

Fun is the key. Nova tried to be a bit too realistic in some areas, and got hammered for it.

Much of this premise is based on FTL travel being expensive. With an arbitrary ammount of time FTL would become as inexpensive and commonplace (relatively) as automobiles are now, imo. Although in an early stage government agencies and large corporations would have a monopoly on interstellar travel this would not last- eventually all technology percolates into the private sector. Look at fuel injection (in an automobile engine)- it's clearly a more advanced technology than carboration that generates signifigantly higher power and efficiency, especially when coupled with computer controls. The machining on an engine destined for fuel injection must be of a signifigantly higher standard than one for carburation, and many many more expensive parts are also needed to fully utilize it. But since it's introduction, fuel injection has steadily lowered in cost and become more common both in the final production vehicle and in the tools and equipment on the market (available to the end user/tinkerer) and now it costs less than carburation (I think)- there isn't even a carburated car on the market anymore, and the carbs available to the end user/tinkerer now cost A LOT. Basically as time passes, old ships, surplus parts, etc will percolate into the civilian area. Although not everyone will be able to go out and buy a FTL ship, I don't think that it will remain in the exclusive domain of large covernment and corporate influence, especially when coupled with better power sources and higher overall technology levels. This is what I feel the general setting of EV is- the post-corporate, post-government world, where anything is available to the basic trader (for a price)...

So rmx256, you see a universe of complete lawlessness, where everybody is a kind of pirate? Cheap FTL to the point where anybody has a chance to try their luck at making a fortune, and no governments to intervene?

Thats fairly boring, corporate and government conflict makes a universe fun. That and a large superior, relatively friendly alien race that tells you in advance when they plan to try and defeat your military so they can take control of all your planets...

I'm usually not a relativist in many senses of the term, but I think in this case there really is no great definition of what is 'right' and 'wrong'. The important thing is that the pieces of the universe you create make sense in terms of the context and history of your universe, and that they make for a compelling gameplay experience.

And no, I don't really care that much what things today look like. Here's one reason why:

Fifty years ago nobody envisioned people using computers as they do today. Most people thought that governments and big corporations would be the only entities to use computer technology- most futuristic depictions of computers were extrapolations of how computer technology was utilized back in the 1950s. Obiviously, that never came to be. 8 megabytes of RAM cost over $1000 ten or fifteen years ago. Today, you can get a 256 megabyte stick for under $20, if you look in the right places. Now, you don't necessarily have to apply that analogy to space travel, or anything else point by point, but it does illustrate one aspect regarding the reason that predictive fiction doesn't work very well.

Now, if I wanted to write a science-fiction novel, I could either utilize cheap, inexpensive personal computers, like what we have today, or I could make an alternate history where computers are still big, clunky, institutional devices. We all know which premise is more 'historically correct', but nobody cares. What we should care about is whether I can write as compelling and interesting a story with the latter than with the former. It's about having fun, not predicting the future.

Now people are a different story: short of psychological breakthroughs (Tom Cruise notwithstanding), people are going to have similar behavioral patterns that can be generalized in certain cases. But that's a discussion for another time.

This post has been edited by UE_Research & Development: 11 July 2005 - 10:22 PM

mrxak, on Jul 11 2005, 02:31 AM, said:

The tiny shuttle pilot who chooses his own course may not be so common in the future.
View Post

Very true, as it is today. When I get out of school and get a job- a real job, not a summer job to make a bit of cash while in collage- I could start a life as a trader, not using spaceships, but using boats. I would buy medical suplies and medicine from Canada. I would bring those down to Brazil, where I would sell them. I would buy bananas. I would take the bananas to Canada and repeat. Eventually I would get a nicer ship and start ferrying people across the Atlantic and back, or maybe bringing odd packages or boxes places ffor huge shipping companys who do not want to divert an entire shipment of bananas to Africa to drop off a guy's car, for example :p. I will make a lot of money, my profits incresing as the total value of my ship and the cargo I carry increases. It seems perfect...

This is why most people do not do this:
Pretend I have started a career like this. To do that I needed about 1 million US dollars. Or more. To get that much money, I would need a high-paying job, probably in buisiness. So, I went through about 10 years of grad school. I am the CEO of a small company. I make 500,000 US dollars a year. I have accumalated 1 million.
So, I have:
$1 million
A salary of $500,000 a year
Enough education to get most or all jobs (at least in the field that I am educated in)

I am going to abandon all that to maybe make some money? I would give up my job, spend my money on a boat, buy some band-aids, and set off to Brazil with hopes of buying some exotic fruit that I will make money off of? NO, I will not.

Buying a boat or even a spaceship for pleasure is fine. Very few people would do it to make money, though. You, a character in EVN, had a lot of money to start with (a spaceship is worth 5000 credits, and you have not only a ship, but 25000! I don't care how advanced your technology is, a space vessel is not cheap) and the player manages to make more. In other words, you are lucky. And brave to even try.

Just my 2 cents.

I was unaware that I implied this!

I was more intoning that I think that there is eventually going to be a point where science and technology has evolved to a point that it is available to everyone. Look in Star Wars- superluminal engines are so common that a small fighter (a very expendable craft, look at how many fighers go up in the Star Wars movies) can be fitted with them. We all know that an X-wing can go superluminal, and can go places without refueling stations (Dagobah) and then make another long trip superluminally- this implies a technological level where not only is hyperspace a cheap commodity, but so is the power to drive it. There will always be large corporate interests and governments who can afford the uber1337 ships and fleets so there will always be order imposed- not a space anarchy. I'm sorry that I was misinterpreted.

mrxak, on Jul 11 2005, 08:19 PM, said:

So rmx256, you see a universe of complete lawlessness, where everybody is a kind of pirate? Cheap FTL to the point where anybody has a chance to try their luck at making a fortune, and no governments to intervene?
View Post

Quote

mrxak Posted Yesterday, 09:31 AM
They may be completely useless too.

Useless??? These can be a great help for ones who are making realistic plugins (and know what they're doing). If they are useless for someone, they're completely useless for no one.
Thanks

(In Fact, I could use this)

2.Thanks

Peace

This post has been edited by Zealot : 12 July 2005 - 10:57 AM

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I think that what I've described is realistic, and the likely turn of events in the distant future. How many private individuals on this planet today own seaworthy vessels? How many private individuals travel to other countries or continents? If you look at commercial shipping, it is clearly dominant. Sure, we have cruise ships for people on vacation, but not many people actually can afford them. There may be some nations that can afford travel (say, the United States), but these superpowers are rare in the world. And while governments today control the seas with ships and planes, look how slowly they journey into the final frontier. Commercial satellites and space initiatives are taking over. And plenty of people complain now that government is controlled by business interests as it is. Is it unreasonable to see them taking over someday, not by military might but by wealth and influence?

While this is true, take a look just 200 years into the past. Privately owned sailing ships plied the seas; if they weren't privately captained, they were most likely privately owned by some wealthy individual who allowed others to crew their ships. Privateers, such as Baltimore Topsail Schooners, light frigates, and even galleys and rowboats went out and attacked others. Small cargo ships would move small amounts of cargo, while large companies like the East and West India companies would move expensive cargo. Ships would meet each other on the seas, but more than likely, they would meet each other as attacker and defender near their home waters. For example, there are very few battles in the war of 1812 between ships that took place, say, in the middle of the Atlantic, but we have reports of all sorts of attacks taking place along the American coast.

In a universe as bleak and as undeveloped as yours, it would be likely that it would mirror the early 19th century model of ships and owners. Only when massive governments dominate the private sector and transportation can bypass the common freighter plying along with passenger does the modern version of naval life emerge. Aircraft supplanted the ship as the major method of transportation. Once a society reached a Nova-like state of development, it's unlikely that the system would shrink to superfreighters and private flitter craft that were only used close to their home. This is simply because there's no other way. We can fly over the ocean, eliminating the need for passenger liners, and we can talk to each other over the phone, eliminating the need for Royal Mail Steamers. We're unlikely to develop ways to 'fly over" space faster than hyperspace ships and other similar ideas. We're also unlikely to develop ansibles, or any method of communication significantly faster than our ships.

Therefore, I'd wager that, if we ever developed a Nova-like society (or, in general, any sci-fi like society), it'd more closely resemble a hyper-advanced Napoleonic Age than the Information Age.

1. Government will always attempt to dominate everything. If there is room for a government to expand, it will. Take the fact that there is virtually no unclaimed land left on this planet as proof.

2. Corporations will always attempt to expand, but they will always be corrupt. Such is the nature of the corporation. A corporation will never be allowed to stand in for government. Would you allow your life to be governed by Sony? Detroit? Apple? IBM?

3. People like to own things. Trading between planets will likely never materialise in the scale most imagine because most planets have the resouces located on them to be self-supportive. As technology develops, this will only increase, decreasing interdependence. More likely, the only things tradable between planets will be business (corporations are more likely to resemble confederations than actual corporations, as the need to market to planets individually creates necessarily fragmented control) and goods. Patents, for example, can help prevent this, but in the end, corporations will find it more practical to manufacture a good on a planet than ferry it to it. As a result, it is unlikely that there will be very much rading between planets at all. Besides business, only specially manufactured goods will be tradeable. For examlpe, special goods that can only be produced in one area. Therefore, with the lack of trade, it is likely that the prices of goods will fall to the point where corporations will place artificial price limits upon them. Spacecraft could be constructed for little, while fuel would always be at a premium. As there is little need for trading, it is likely that the only purpose for ships would be the transporation of people. People looking to get rich with their spacecraft would ferry people, not ore.

4. Military has always been half defensive, half offensive. It makes no sense to meet your enemy halfway, as it is likely that you will miss them. This is why the great ships of the Napoleonic War didn't fight each other in the middle of the ocean, but near the coast. Now, we can utilise satellites to view the entire planet; we can battle anywhere we choose. We are unlikely to develop this capability on an interstellar scale, so it is likely that wars will be fought by sending our attackers at each other and waiting to use our defenders. Scout ships are impractical, as, in space warfare, we must deal with three dimensions. Those of you who have read Ender's Game know that the most effective defence in space is an offensive. It's much harder to defend a planet or system with 129600 degrees of attack to consider, versus an attack with only 1 degree to consider.

P.S. There are thousands, perhaps millions of seaworthy vessels in private hands. There are mass manufacturers of seaworthy private yachts, sailing vessels, and motor boats. Even most common cabin cruisers can make voyages into the ocean, though not trans-oceanic crossings.

This post has been edited by theneofrenchmen : 12 July 2005 - 02:13 PM

Theneofrenchman makes some good points. But keep some things about commerce in mind here. People will buy absolutely anything from overseas. The company that I work for recently bought several million dollars worth of $0.25 chewing gum from China, which had to be shipped in giant shipping containers on one of those giant ships that carry shipping containers, no doubt- in our equasion it may be like a Leviathan loaded down with straws going from Kel'arly to somewhere in the GLimmer system (I am not up on my Nova geography- sorry if this is inaccurate or otherwise). People will pay for the shipping because it is a fact that- especially after the means of production and the means of shipping are bought and paid for- things will always be able to be made cheaper somewhere and can be shipped for less than it costs to make. That's why our TVs come from Japan (although we have perfectly good facilities to make them here) and our fine wine comes from France (California notwithstanding). We have contries on Earth well known for what they do now- Japan for high tech, German and Italian automobiles, American agribuisiness, etc- imagine whole planets known for what they produce. This may be an oversimplification and it is, as most planets run by competant leadership will not allow it's means of survival to be dependant on shipped-in food or water, but any level of consumer good, convienience or even building material can easily be brought in cheaper than it will be to create a new infrastructure to produce that item, good or material (or to face the potentially disastrous ecological concequences of heavy industrialization!).

But my point was exactly that: all of these things are manufactured on a planet. It's more foreseeable that a planet will trade resources with itself: this is because resources are localised. The farther away from the point of production something is, the more expsensive it will be: this is a fact.

The idea of a Leviathan moving 4000 tons of straws is completely ridiculous, simply because straws are such inexpensive products that there is absolutely no way that a company could sell those straws competitively. Even today, we are seeing the decline of uber business and the growth of regional business. Even though these businesses are controlled, at heart, by a single corporation, it's more feasible to have sub-distributors, to have divisions, and to have subsidiaries. Sony doesn't concern itself with what's being sold in New York, it lets its North East division be concerned with that. This allows them to grow incredibly large while providing superior service to the individual.

Let's imagine a solar system (ours) in which every planet and/or major moon has several million (billions in some places) people living on it. You seem to view this as a planet. Maybe the Belt will export metals, the Gas Giants will export fuel and water, Saturn will export nitrogen, Earth will export life and manufactured goods, etc. This idea, while feasible, is made infeasible when you consider the costs of transport. Since each planet has (more or less) everything needed to manufacture a product on it, it's simpler to place a factory there and import the vital materials (maybe plastics or biological components) rather than exporting the completed product.

We have massive tankers and ships today because we tend to localise our production based on where it's cheaper. Interplanetary transportation will likely never be cheap enough to transport goods en masse, while . For one, you can't bypass space by flying over it (if we had FTL travel that made our solar system a day's travel across, then the system would be the planet and each system would become like the planet), and unlike sea ships, space ships are much more expensive to construct, cannot be open (most cargo is pressure sensitive. even your straws would be chemically altered and more than likely unusable by the time they got across the galaxy if they were transported 50 degrees above absolute 0) to the air. Furthermore, the transportation costs from orbit to the planet will never compare with the transportation cost from port to consumer (mainly, a crane swinging around).

An example of this on Earth? An island outpost in 1798. Did they import their products en masse from Europe? No, they had a local blacksmith, a local tailor, a local shipwright, and so on. They were self-sufficient because there was no way shipping goods to them could turn up a profit.

I think that you are looking too much to the past for your inspiration (something that I can also be accused of in a different way). The general cost of doing buisiness keeps going down as technology becomes more mature. After a certain point we on Earth are going to have no choice other than to use renewable resources for our energy needs- I can see superships plying the seas powered by spersfficient solar cells or even fuel cells powered by the sea that they exist on very easily. I think that after an arbitrary period of time space travel would be as relatively inexpensive as the cost of gas it takes to travel to the next magor city, and that is the most interesting, and most Nova-esque period of time for us to concentrate on. Technology will continue to improve- one hundred years ago noone though that the average person would have at thier whim the power to travel to the next near city in a span of an hour, across the country in several, and across to the other side of the world in half a day. There will be a point in the future where we'll struggle to Europa. Then we'll struggle to Centauri as we rapidly travel to Europa. Then we'll visit the next spiral arm slowly as we rapidly approach Centauri. See? Eventually in an arbitrarally large span of time travel time and travel cost will be irrelevant, and true galactic civilisation will be possible. This is how I have Kemet set, for instance, and I think that after all of the thought (literally years!) I've spent on it that it is a reasonably accurate scenereo. If each planet is internally sufficient, and requires nought from it's neighbor, there will be no reason for a galactic civilisation and less of a reason to set a plug in one. Your own analogy of a system becomming the equivalent of a planet economically can just as easily be brought up to the next scale- each system a town on the trade route of the galaxy.

Not all planets are equal. For instance maybe one planet has a huge amount of a highly sought after material to be mined, but its relatively hot and has more or less no drinkable water? That planet would sell off a portion of its mine-able products to buy water from another system.

1. Thank you for occasionally starting some very thought-stimulating topics here.

2. That said, I must disagree with:

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Travel/tourism. This has been and always will be the privilege of the wealthy. At the interplanetary and interstellar scale, the cost will be extremely high.

There was a time when cars were the sole province of the wealthy. There was a time when air travel was the exclusive province of the rich. Not anymore.

If interstellar trade is profitable, then the cost of interstellar travel will be low as well.

The laws of economics dictate that though interstellar tourism may start as a luxury of the rich, people who profit from it will try to lower prices with improved technology in order to increase their customers. That has been the case for many things such as cars and air travel. I expect it to be the case if interstellar travel becomes feasible.

Your example of ocean liners actually underlines my point. There was a time when ships was the primary means for travel. At that time, sea travel was relatively inexpensive. Since then, air travel was found to be more efficient than sea travel despite the fact that initially, air travel was more expensive. Due to its superior efficiency, the bulk of traveling today is done via air and sea travel has been reduced to the status of luxury tourism.

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For the most part, sending a data capsule or robot is cheaper and more efficient than sending a person. Virtual reality and near-orbit tourism would satisfy the vast majority of exotic vacation needs, and would be quite cheap.

That first sentence only applies to couriers. Even in such cases, there is the danger that robots and data capsules might be intercepted. Some might think that sending actual human couriers are the answer for the most important trade and military secrets because a human courier might be flexible enough to avoid capture.

As for your second statement, let me note that despite the fact that all of Shakespeare's works are available on the Internet, plenty of people with access to the Internet still buy them from stores. Instead of becoming a paperless society, we are using more paper than ever before. There is something about being able to touch reality that many people seem incapable of doing without.

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It would be worth it to spend a tremendous amount of money on planetary defenses, for obvious reasons, but governments would only be able to afford it with high taxes on interstellar trade. This means lots of money, but increases the expense of interstellar travel that much more. Alternatively, the supermassive interstellar trade corporations could take the role of planetary defenders. They have a vested interest in keeping their markets annihilation-free, and they have the deep pockets to pay for nuke-protection. It seems that the ideal government in such a society would be none at all. Let the corporations take care of the big problems.

This is not consistent with the reality that we live in. Though the US spends more on defense than anybody else, it adds up to a grand total of about 3.5% of its GDP. It has eliminated most tariffs on manufactured goods and is working to eliminate other trade barriers.

I think you're underestimating economic growth. Even defense spending drives economic growth. In other words, defense spending helps (in a small but not insignificant way) pay for itself.

Even assuming that you are right on defense spending, that is no reason to jump to the sci-fi conclusion that corporations will take over governments. There are very few known cases of that and those corporations tend to be backed by other governments. The East India Company is one of the few companies that directly ruled people and even their rule was eventually replaced by the British.

Complaints of businesses taking over governments went back at least a century, if not earlier. I see little evidence of it then, now, nor do I expect it in the future.

As an old saying goes: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So true.

FedKiller, on Jul 11 2005, 11:14 PM, said:

You, a character in EVN, had a lot of money to start with (a spaceship is worth 5000 credits, and you have not only a ship, but 25000! I don't care how advanced your technology is, a space vessel is not cheap) and the player manages to make more.

I agree, and I've always thought it would be more realistic if a large corperation were to start manufacturing very cheap and simple ships, and lease them to pilots. Imagine how much more challenging the beginning of Nova would be if you were given a shuttle, 10000 credits, and were being charged 1000 credits a day to "rent" the shuttle? Better yet, only allow the player to do Sigma missions... maybe the odd informal bar mission, too.

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I think that you are looking too much to the past for your inspiration (something that I can also be accused of in a different way).

Let us not forget a golden rule of life, however. History has a tendency to repeat itself. Through the cyclical movement of time, the future tends to look less like the present and more like the past.

We are Rome again.
We will run up against an Atilla.