Includes resource management, empire building, trading and more: http://levelup-games.eu/products/mmo-game-engine.php
We could easily use this as a framework to build the first HYPER space based MMO / empire building game and integrate HYPER as a resource into the game! The cost of purchasing the framework can be covered with the 500 000 HYPER MMO Development fund.
That would be a good start. I hope the engine has the capability for a couple of the features that were mentioned like global market and player to player contracts for resources. The description did not mention anything like that but hopefully those things could be built in manually.
Also mentioned was using real planets and star systems as a map which is a really interesting idea. It would be nice to incorporate many actual images of Mars as plenty of those out there, including a 1.3 billion pixel image. A good mix would be to use real data/images where possible and in the cases where no image is available use the artwork from Gladimor. To get started our solar system could be used and as it evolves expand beyond to more distant locations......but all using real data for planets/moons/solar systems/galaxies etc.