This space combat sim was released last week, thought I'd give it some love, for those who are eternally searching for that Elite replacement..
http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/index.htm
Overall, you just can't find a more compact and elegantly evolved space combat simulation game. If Elite had a cool big brother this would be it.
Some points to note:
* affordable and very re-playable
* large explorable universe with factions
* freeform open gameplay, exploring, trading, building and customising, racing, fighting, mining, transporting, protecting
* the space flight physics (inertial flight actually helps you reduce the cost of fuel)
* planet fall, and switch to gravity based flight model
* the ability to customise your ship uniquely, by adding, placing and scaling parts
* the ability to play as a twitch pilot doing missions, and combat and mining (asteroid and planet surface) and trading, fuel scooping from stars and nebula
* the small download (45Mb) and install footprint (130Mb)
* single player profile can be used interchangeably on a multiplayer server and play co-operatively or competitively with up to 32 other players
* run a dedicated server of your own
* part of the StarWraith community