Where are we playing this?

That could be a cool mission. Get to that ship and find out what caused the black out. Could be a hidden base on a nearby planet or something.

Could we use a ship part to rent a ship for 1 mission?

Another option: Vague mentioned stealing a ship. How about we stole one to get away from whatever happened on Benny's planet. We know they'll track us eventually, so we need to get to the abandoned ship and take that one instead.
That way we can just leave the stolen one behind :P
I'm fine with that, but I would change it to the only technologically advanced aliens. So there are aliens we know of, but they are more like animals to us. Primitive and primal beings. They've probably been categorized for the most party. We can think of some spacy names like "Methane bugs" or "Crolon flesh rippers".

If we do this, do bear in mind that Benny did not own that ship, so it would still be owned by the Scout Services, and they might want it back and be even more interested in the answers to the question of what happened (their interest may be in keeping it quiet, of course).
'ship part' being 'Ship Shares'? We can work something like that out.

Ship Shares are not money (hence you can't convert them to money) they (page 48).

Ship Shares are some 'controlling interest' in a ship, so Benny's first-hand experience could count as his 'share'.

You might need to take out a loan to finance the recovery mission, some shady organisation might approach you to do it and have a controlling interest of their own.

Options abound, but only if TrailHead wants to explore this.
It was not 'abandoned' it will be more complicated than that. But sure.

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A term/distinction often used for this is 'sophont'. Presumably the universe is filled with 'alien creatures', but not all of them can be 'negotiated with'.
This is always a worry with these types of discussion. The first thing suggested tends to get more traction than it deserves because people go along with it.

Do you want to do that? We can just as easily have a universe teaming with alien intelligence, like in Trek-Wars.
Those poor things are harmless, but vilified because of their misunderstood name. );

I don't really mind whether or not there are many alien races. Just as long as we're not the only sentient things on every planet we go to. Whether we meet other humans or aliens is less significant to me. Along with exploring, I'd like to have chances to do some diplomacy and trading.

I agree, I would not want our PCs to be the only sentient beings on every planet we go. I would expect we'd meet other humans most places... since the alien my PC met was on the fringe of chartered space. I'm interpreting chartered space as chartered by humans. I would also like chances for us to do some diplomacy and trading.

I also agree that it would be cool if there are (alien to us) non-sentient creatures on various planets that we may have to deal with. Maybe helping a human settlement deal with an influx of migrating critters or animal attacks. Or simply some creature being an obstacle or challenge to overcome in pursuing some unrelated objective.

I assume they have spread everywhere. I can not promise they will all that sentient, I have met some humans.
The book has its own interpretation, but if we are not using the setting from the book, don't worry too much about its use of such words.

However, that interpretation seems reasonable. That terms is fairly generic.
Me too. Will do.
Sounds good. I am having ideas.
Indubitably.

Not weighing in a lot on this conversation. Not really my forté. But I didn't read anything I didn't agree with.
I like the different types of aliens idea. In my mind Aliens are a smarter species, but this is better.

I have some thoughts but haven’t had the bandwidth to get them written down yet.

I don’t think there’s a scout ship out there waiting for us to find. Benny was found drifting. Presumably the ship was rescued along with him. And it’s likely he wasn’t the only scout aboard. Trying to track down his crew mate or mates could be a quest. We could assume the scout service kept us apart after the incident so we couldn’t compare notes to cover something up.

We could assume that the alien contact and the adrift with no memory were separate but related. Maybe Benny went back to the fringe of Chartered/friendly space to revisit his alien contact but others of his contact’s society intercepted him. Let’s say the aliens are psionic and wiped Benny’s memories and those of his crew mate’s.

Understood. Has work settled a bit? No rush, though.
We can make it work either way. It is up to you.
That was 12 years ago. We can look into that if you want, but it probably is no longer a high priority if it has been left this long. Maybe you can tell us if any of them made it. You could declare when we meet people or end up in a situation, that someone there is one of your old crew, (with similar wiped minds?).
Cool.
We can. If we don't want to decide now, we can leave that mystery till later.
Can do. If you want to have that be a fact. We can still leave the mystery of 'why' open for discovery.
Are you wanting to go back there soon? Do you want to start there?

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Tell us about these 'aliens'. You have first say, then we can chat about the nature of 'alien' in this setting.

Moving this forward
I think we should maybe move this forward and not rely on TrailHead to provide these answers right now. We can set our starting point in a human sector and revisit their 'Alien' Contact when time permits.

Ship
Since we are not getting Benny's ship, do we want to build one of our own, or pick something reasonable from the book? You will have to pay for whatever you get, so I won't impose limits (unless it turns out I am wrong and have to:), though we may need to adjust some aspects down to the TL we are playing at (TL10? TL9?).

This need to pay for the ship is often a driving force in Traveller, it spurs us to engage in Trade, which leads to movement which leads to adventure. If the players are really not interested in that aspect of the game (which might, of course, mean this is the wrong game) I can easily arrange for you to get a ship you don't have to pay for... with Credits. Let me know.

Trade Worlds
@TheGenerator: You indicated that Trade was high on your interest list for this game. I started working on making a sector and worlds, but found it unsatisfying on my own and did not get any feedback from the players when I asked for input. I am not sure I want to lay out a sector on a hex grid, I usually use point-crawls rather than hex-crawls, but that can curtail the ability to look at Worlds within reach and compare Trade Codes and do Speculative Trade.

We can generate a random Sector, or work together to make some worlds, or we can say what sort of world we are wanting to go to and build them just before we get there.

There is also the option of using the official map and worlds, or some part of that, (see https://travellermap.com/), and I will need to read up on the setting. There is not a lot in the book I have, and I don't often use premade settings, so that would not be my first choice, and it probably won't fit with the (tentative) worldbuilding we have established so far.

The ship
I feel like I don't really know enough about the game to know what makes a good ship. So a basic one from the book seems like a good option. Which ones would fit our budget?

Trade
I did pick trade as my priority, but not so much for the trade aspect as the social interaction/factions aspect of it. While I enjoy exploring, I wouldn't want to hop from one uninhabited planet/environment to the next. Though, trading seems like a good source of income and a great reason to go to new places.
I prefer this method, personally. I have a feeling a high percentage of any map we make would be unused. Is there some kind of in-between option? For example everyone creates 1 planet with a few aspects and those are planets we know are 'in the neighborhood'. Not too specific, but something we could use in conversation and OOC ideas.
Something like: Xenon 8: desert planet, lava lakes, underground fauna and flora, home to 3 colonies.

In general
Since we're a bit bogged down in the world creation, I think it might be better to just get started with what we have and fill in the blanks as we go along. Is that an option?

From what has been discussed in this group before, it seems like everyone is happy to go with each other's ideas. I guess that's part of the reason for it taking a while, everyone is waiting for someone else to make a decision and then say "That sounds good, let's do it that way" :D
So I think we can assume if anything needs to be changed or added later on, we're happy to make it work as a group.

If you have any specific questions you're struggling with, please post them. If you need someone to bounce ideas off of, feel free to PM me or message me on discord for a faster paced conversation.

Some questions we hadn't answered:
- TL --> see dice roll
- Aliens --> Can we do a sort of warm-up mission, a tutorial with maybe 1 fight and some social rolls. This mission can then lead us to a new one where we have to find out more about aliens? I think it's more fun to play and find out.
- Skill package --> I'm going to look at which fits us best. (or rather, worst, so we can fill in some skill gaps)
- How do we know each other? --> I think the easiest way to do this is to say we all worked together on something in the past. However, we did have some ideas with the linked events. Those work as well. (why not both?)

Edit: Still rolling 1's :P

It will depend a lot on what sort of game we wanting to play. A Scout/Courier or Free Trader might be best unless we want more guns. I assume a Free Trader is the 'default'?
That depends on your 'budget'. You will need to make enough money to pay off whatever you get (unless you don't) so the more expensive they are the more you will need to work on getting money.

I can not comment on how much you can make, it does look like, if you play your cards right and get a bit lucky, you can make millions quite easily (possibly too easy (possibly so that players don't get frustrated)). Whatever the players decide to aim for we can make possible (I can always complicate your trade with adventures if you are making too much).
Yes, the need to trade is often what leads to all the other things in the game. Trade is not the goal (once you earn enough to retire, why don't you retire?). Without the need for trade, it can get silly saying why you are travelling and getting into adventure. 'Exploration' only goes so far to explain such things, and is usually done for 'reasons of trade'. Military campaigns can get away from the trade dependence, but that does not seem interesting to any of us.
Yes. We can decide where we start, define that world, then, when we are ready to move to the next world or star system, we can design that system together.

If someone wants to explore a particular type of system, society, or event, they can say so and we can make the appropriate place.
We do need certain basics before I can make start, things like TL and if you have a ship.
i have TRIED. :)
See? :)
TL 9 has me thinking that your having a ship with these newfangled Jump Drives makes you a valuable asset.

I can see you 'exploring' and making contact (again) with colonies that left 'earth' a long time ago on the older style of generation ships, bringing them news and valuable new technologies, finding how they have adapted (evolved some might call it) to suit their new circumstances.
50/50 this time though. :)
That is simple. Unless there are objections we can just go with that.
If we are recruiting more players they might fill some gaps already. So take a look, but we may wait till we have everyone before making a final decision. We can also hire people (NPCs) to fill gaps.
Let's leave this for now. Where we start can be all 'human' and we can see how things progress.
Sure. Knowing whether or not we have a ship will make a difference. Maybe, if we don't 'buy' a ship, or as part of that purchase (for some discount) the first mission is to get/collect the ship?

If we pick up our ship mid-mission, maybe we don't know all the details about it. So we can discover later that is has things we had not thought to add. ("Oh, it has smuggler's hidden compartments?", or "We can make it refine fuel if we add a < whatsit > to the < thingymabob >... if only we had some Engineering...").

That's basically how America was discovered. (Not counting the ppl who already lived there :P)
I know, but the questions are hard :(
That's what the dice want you to think!🤫😨
That sounds fun! :) We could even roll on a table of TL# stuff if we want to and see how that shapes the story.

No, let's not count them... (and they possibly came over from Siberia/Asia anyway. And for similar reasons. :)
... Else they do not matter. :)
True. And those dice were pretending to be coins, and so is inherently untrustworthy.
Not sure what 'table' you are referring to, but we could do. We can make use of the Quirks table as well (page 188) but that is probably more useful at the start than for later discoveries.

We'd have to create one

VagueGM, Airshark and The Generator - Sorry I have been missing for so long. Work and family obligations have been filling my days from early morning to late at night. I’ve been meaning to post something for a while. I finally have a moment to write you this morning at the supermarket as I await delivery of my groceries to my car. I don’t foresee a change in my schedule anytime soon. So, with regret, I feel I must withdraw from this game. Thanks for inviting me to play a longer form game with you. I really enjoyed rolling up a Traveller and was looking forward to playing this with you. Best regards, TrailHead

Sorry to hear that, you will be missed.

If your schedule ever improves, come back and rejoin us.