Space Travel

While precise practices and laws vary considerably across the Outer Systems, certain regulations related to space travel are still enforced by the United Leagues of Earth in the region, and there is thus a degree of standardisation. Even in the Lost Systems and Nomad Space, there are certain practices that are simply practical to ensure safe and efficient interplanetary and interstellar travel.
Typically, before undocking from a station or taking off from a planetary surface, spacecraft must file a flight plan with the local authorities to ensure safety and the smooth flow of space traffic. Deviations from flight plans are usually detected by automatic monitoring systems, and dealt with first by warnings, before responses escalate as necessary to prevent rogue ships from endangering lives and infrastructure. In particular, rogue ships approaching space stations, habitats, orbital rings, or wormhole gateways can be met with extreme force if they fail to comply with warnings.
Once a spacecraft's flight plan has been approved by both automated systems and a human operator, and the crew have performed necessary pre-flight checks and maintenance, it can take off or undock and begin following its route. Most actual piloting is performed by the vessel's autopilot, but, per ULE regulations, human crewmembers must be on standby to respond to any unexpected emergencies. In regions of space with less traffic or looser regulations, spacecraft can typically deviate from their flight plans to a greater degree before receiving warnings from authorities. In areas with more traffic or in states with tighter regulations, however, even slight changes are not tolerated.
Importantly, the use of main thrusters is not permitted in close proximity to spaceborne infrasturcutre, meaning that ships docking or undocking from space stations or habitats, or approaching wormhole gateways, must rely solely on maneouvring thrusters. Additionally, speed limits are universally enforced around wormhole gateways and other space infrastructure to prevent accidents or intentional attacks, and some states enforce speed limits across their entire territory for similar reasons.
Ships planning to travel between star systems must gain approval for a flight plan in the system they are travelling to before entering it. This can result in considerable travel delays, as ships must wait for wormhole relays to pass their information back and forth between systems before receiving approval. Combined with regular wormhole outages in much of the Outer Systems, this means that ships seeking to pass between systems must sometimes queue for days or even weeks if their routes are not planned efficiently.
Ships equipped with jump drives can circumvent some of the bureaucracy associated with wormhole gateways, but still face their own restrictions. Since the wormholes created by jump drives take several hours to form, they can be avoided fairly easily by other ships, but can still cause disruptions to space traffic, and freak accidents are still possible. Thus, in systems which permit unscheduled jumps at all, they are typically relegated to being performed on the outskirts of star systems. Interstellar jumps that have been scheduled in advance (generally via wormhole relays) can generally be performed closer to the core of systems. In-system jumps are a more common time saver for jump-capable ships, as they can be scheduled more easily and consume less power than interstellar jumps. As such, most ships equipped with jump drives still make use of wormhole gateways whenever possible, but even when doing so, they can often reach their destinations two or three times faster than typical ships.
In the Lost Systems and Nomad Space, wormhole gateways are unavailable, and there is considerably less regulation than in the Outer Systems or Earth Space. While some Nomad flotillas make efforts to regulate traffic in their territory, and the Knights Planetar attempt to do so in the Lost Systems, ships typically have to communicate with each other directly to prevent the risk of collision. Fortunately, since these regions see considerably less traffic than even the Outer Systems, this is usually sufficient to allow for relatively safe space travel.
See also: The Merchant's Voyage