The concept of a Legacy Ship is quite simple; it's a family ship that is passed down from one generation to the next. One can loosely compare it to a family business, except generally a legacy ship features multiple families. It is common for several families to contribute to the down payment of the ship, and then operate it together in order to pay off the mortgage. Once paid off, it is handed down to the descendants.

Ownership of a legacy ship can evolve over time. Like a corporation, the ship has “shares” which are proportional to how much was originally contributed to the purchase of the ship. Net profit (after all expenses are deducted) is split amongst the shareholders proportionally with some amount kept in reserve to ensure the ship has operating capital.

A legacy ship can, and usually does, have regular employees that are not members of the family. These people are paid some normal salaried amount and their salaries are part of the operating expense of the ship. However, if one of those employees wishes to raise a family on the ship and become a part of the legacy of the ship, they may be permitted to purchase shares and become partial owners of the ship.

Legacy ships can merge as well; if two legacy ships wish to merge their operations, they may either choose to do so as sister-ships supporting each other, or they may choose to literally merge. Space Boomers are very well known for conjoining ships to make even larger ships, in sometimes very awkward looking fashions. This contributes to the perception of Space Boomers as being “Space Trash”.

And finally, a family can choose to sell their shares or even be forced to sell their shares based on the contracts involved in the ownership of the ship. Typically, the contracts require all parties that own shares to actually live on the ship and help operate it. Thus, a family choosing to permanently leave the ship would usually trigger a forced sale of owned shares.

There is no solid codex of rules, however, and a Legacy ship could choose to sell shares to an outside investor for whatever purpose. Shareholders usually have the ability to vote, much like they do in a corporation, on major decisions such as this.

Finally, a few notes on leadership on a legacy ship. This can be done in a lot of different ways and varies wildly from ship to ship. On the Legacy Flint-Vasa, the majority owner (Ria Flint) is the 'owner' of the ship and handles the business aspects of the operation. These aspects involve finding work, signing contracts, managing customer relationships, accounting, and so forth. Operationally, Jarvis Flint is the captain of the ship, and generally has full control over how the ship is operated on a day to day basis. Finally, Enkeli Vasa is the chief engineer of the ship and has full control over how the engine section is run.

It is fairly common for legacy ships to divide leadership like that; specifically, to separate concerns into operational vs logistical aspects. However, some legacy ships operate on an election basis, or have some rotation of leadership.