Returned from the wilderness so a good point to chip in...
Although I haven't played much SF in my long gaming career, any 'Traveller-type' games I have played have always had a strange sort of economics to them. Wealth seems to work on a log scale in that you can buy all your usual 'adventuring' gear fairly cheaply (even progressing up to fancy lasers and battle armour) but unless the game has started with the group having their own craft, then the MASSIVE cost of not only buying, but running, a starship just dwarfs everything else to the point that we've always usually come by ships by plot device. Plus, once you've got one, given how hugely expensive they are, if you can get another one then you could practically buy a small continent on a nice warm planet somewhere by selling it off. Someone made the comment about not getting hit being the strategy for GURPS combat - last game like this I played our ship had no guns, shields or armour, so whenever we detected another ship we just ran on general principles; the risk of getting into a fight was just too much to take!
So, I'd say decide on which ship you want us to be on. If it's been given to us by a patron or for some other reason, just ask other people not to bother buying their own craft other than for flavour reasons ('we've got 2 weeks off so I'm going to spend some time on my boat...'). Otherwise, unless money is going to play a significant part in events (in one game we were literally having to take cargo with enough value to be able to afford to buy fuel - a la Serenity - money was *that* tight) then if Shayuri's character concept is served by having a ship, then go that route. How did the character get it (not being familiar with the GURPS Traveller version) - is it a mustering out thing, or did he buy it (in which case, I presume that's a whole lot of character points into Wealth to be able to afford it)?
From my character's POV, the difference will be whether Shayuri's character has hired him as an engineer previously because it is his ship, or whether we have been thrown together as 'crew' on behalf of a patron. This, I assume, will have a bearing on how the game works. If the ship is supplied, the patron can direct us on 'jobs' which allows for the element of 'you're doing it because I tell you you're doing it' in the plots; that can still happen if one of the characters owns the ship and we are some sort of company with a letter of marque from a patron, but it may also open up other avenues, for example the 'we're so short of money we're just going to *have* to take this job' type of thing. How does that square with what you had in mind, Leif?