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The State of the Galaxy
The know universe right now is made up of the Orion Spur and Perseus Arm of the Milky Way, it's populated by many sapient species and their respective governments both centralized and not. Not to mention many independent habitats, communes and confederations. Roughly 23% of both arms combined are actively exploited for living space and resources, colonization efforts expand from all fronts day by day. Past that is known as 'null space' named for it's emptiness and lack of any official security.
To put it simply, it depends. The varied amount of currency, expanded space and resources that came with space travel roughly 300 years ago broke up and spread out a lot of capitol for almost every sapient species. However extremes of poverty and wealth exist and while every major species state has inflexible, federal laws(I.E. Solgov, The Unathi Dominion, The Skrellian Systems). Every planet, habitat or colony has it's own local conditions, economic state and laws.
In short, there's so much out there, it's up there for players to fill in as they wish to.
To make it an easy translation, the universal energy credit is a universal(duh) currency that's 89% electronic and 10% note. While no central banking system regulates it, it's a currency backed by at the time of writing this - 3.456 megajoules per credit. There any many other currencies in the known galaxy all backed by other goods, or even fiat. However the conversion rates vary wildly and change often. Welcome to large scale economics.
For an easy frame of reference, 30 credits is a current day $1 USD. See also Galaxy Economics
Even though it’s four hundred years in the future, the vastness of space and the limits of physics hasn’t turned space travel quite into the bus ride we’d hope it would be. At least when it comes to system to system travel. Centuries of improvement onto both engine technology and hull composition have made travel between a star system’s bodies affordable and relatively fast. Although a trip between an inner-system body to an outer-system one would take weeks. It’s far less of a time investment compared to the /years/ it would be centuries ago. However, star to star travel is still possible through a technological marvel known as the Blue Space Drive. Yet the energy requirement and the sheer space it needs makes it difficult, if not impossible to put on smaller vessels.
A good question. The official definition of Bluespace in the scientific community right now is “A space that is over or under the perceivable world that does not obey known laws of physics or relativity.” A quite vague answer and in truth… That’s because what is known about bluespace is not fully grasped. There are many theories and hypotheses about just what bluespace is. The most currently accepted being that it’s a ‘buffer’ state around the physical world that holds all quantum observations and outcomes. Anyone familiar with the schrodinger's cat thought experiment could say it’s where both the cat and it’s corpse are until the box is re-opened. What is firmly known about bluespace are two facts. It’s called bluespace for the blue ‘tinting’ the environment has when something is put within it’s state, and it is very hazardous to organic life without some form of protection or PPE. How this harm manifests is uncertain, but it’s hypothesized an unknown spectrum of radiation rapidly kills and disintegrates carbon life leaving little behind.
In the past few centuries medical care has grown leaps and bounds in its potency and reliability. Chemical and pharmaceutical sciences have paved the way to drugs that can regenerate tissue and organ cells in minutes. Artificial and assisted organs are relatively affordable to the point they’re the ‘cheap’ option compared to flash-cloned copies of the patient's own. Cryogenics has both become a way to stave off aging across long journies or periods, as well as a way to save the critically and mortally wounded in a pinch.
Genetic tweaking via cloning and designed retrovirii has not only ‘cured’ most flaws in human anatomy. It’s eliminated almost all known genetic defects and ‘incurable’ viruses today. It’s also become so affordable cosmetic and performance ‘splices’ that were once only in the grasp of the wealthy are covered under most insurances. Fully cloned ‘custom’ bodies that have to be resleeved into, however are still in lines of a small property mortgage, but only the very dedicated or wealthy go that far.
Speaking of resleeving… In the past sixty years, the technology of the Soul Crypt has become more and more prominent. What began as a pet project to give those who had little, or a poor quality of time left using technology based on Positronic Cubes a chance to live on in a synthetic shell. Now functional immortality in flash-cloned copies of one’s original body is a practical solution to most.