Well do you have a group of people who would play it near you?
Solo play isn't exactly its strong point. You can read Starslayer's and mine ongoing campaign to get a feel for the system...though it is continously getting held up (mea cupia maxima) but we should get past the log jam soon.
Either of us can answer questions you might have. I'd recommend getting...I'm not sure what is the actual system at the moment but Galactic Starfire is available (4th Edition) and it may be upwards of 6th Edition right now. Getting the 3rdR stuff is probably a lot harder than something more modern, but the advantage is then you can use starfire assistant. My feeling is that program makes large empires do-able otherwise paperwork will cause the game to collapse fairly rapidly.
The "Games In", a store in Munchen (
http://www.games-in-vlg.de/), would be a good place to contact if you wanted something sent to you. I know the people there and they are efficient and good at that thing.
It is about the best system I know of for playing small fleet (10-50 ships depending on your preference) actions. The ships are not as detailed as in other games (starfleet battles, full thrust, etc) but you can run them with a lot less effort. Vassel can be used to play the game online as well. So with vassel plus 3rdR+SM2+Imperial Starfire and Starfire assistant an email game is also possible.
If you are a really good EXCEL specialist you may be able to work up spreadsheets but as I found out that works only to a point and really you need a database program. As much as I like 3rdR I can't help but suggest you at least consider the more modern versions (assuming you can find away around the paperwork issues) because they are much easier to get a hold of. Though it may well be that you can get PDF versions from Marvin Lamb (the head of Starfire Design Studios, the official starfire person).
I would be stunned and amazed if you can find anyone playing the game at a convention.