Expensive. And dangerous. You can't ever put off repairs so if you're going anywhere that and fuel eats up most of your money, and the cost of anything else is mostly from how much it costs to transport it, not how much to make it. We have the Galactic Authority that's supposed to be in charge of everything but really the corporations are the real power. They have the money and more ships, so if you run into someone out there it's more likely to be a corp than the government. It means you have to be careful not to piss them off, otherwise you'll dock somewhere and find out no one wants to deal with you and no one's going to help if something happens in between stops.