These roguelikes (I think this game stretches that term) are based around the "sport" of pitting yourself against the randomly selected encounters with scarce resources and improvising your way to survival or success with no safety net. The unprotected environment is part of the fun, you could copy the saves around but you're only really cheating yourself out of the fun.
In other news, on my third run (using the default ship) I just got mutual destruction with the rebel flagship! My guys were huddled in the medical bay of the otherwise burning ship while the weapons continued to fire and then everyone just blew up. I can confirm this result does not elicit any kind of recognition of success from the game...