So Rat is already on board with his piloting skills. Grel just purchased a ship. Fox bought himself a nice big hauling transport. Salo has some interest still I think. Who else wants to explore the 'verse? The game is a big pile of promises right now, with a hangar module to see any finished ships you may have pledged for early (everything is available in game, you don't have to spend real money unless you just want a nicer ship to start with). Basically, this game is trying to be every space sci-fi genre you can think of. After the hangar module, a dogfighting alpha module will release soon (next month?), then a social module so we can visit eachothers hangars and social hubs like cantinas, then the FPS portion of the game (for pirate boarding and on ground fighting), then they will bring it all together for Beta which is the Persistent Universe (basically the MMO portion), as well as a single player (with co-op) campaign that will probably be released episodically to predate the Persistent Universe.
Over 100 star-systems to explore, plenty of ships already (I think they plan about 100 ready at launch), everything highly customization, larger ships will be crewed by friends and/or NPCs, and plenty of playstyles catered to (dogfighter, smuggler, legit transport/trader, miner, pirate, bounty hunters). You can see influence from every sci-fi show and genre you can probably imagine (this is made by Chris Roberts, the guy who did the Wing Commander series that I never played).
Two starter ships to choose from at launch:
Aurora:
Mustang:

Coming soon, it isn't fully modeled yet.
Here is my beauty (in a touched up concept art):
Check it out if you aren't familiar with it. Has a lot of great ideas and promises (even Oculus Rift support).
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT5BD7AtaoA