Some engineer spent hundreds of credits of time coming up with an acronym now lost to time. CRATEs are are able to be guided through orbital manouvers by pilots on other orbital vessels, including EXO pods. This makes them very useful for hauling cargo.
EXO pods serve multiple purposes: They house 1-4 humans, they are able to perform orbital navigations, and gather power from solar panels. The designs are as old as they are resilient. EXO-Corp keeps making new pods, but it is slow going since materials have to be gathered from the asteroid belt.
We used to turn trees into a substance called paper at a massive scale. Out of all of the advances of hyrdoponics, though, we never manage to get trees to grow in orbit, something about gravity seems to be fundamental to the process. Still, we needed visual means of art and communication less permanent than punched metal, but that wasn't given to the particulate detritus of pencils and erasers. So, almost everyone switched to low-refresh pigment-switching displays, which got called Raster panels.
Humans were not meant to live in space. And yet, here we were. Somehow, despite all of the very lethal potential problems, being part of the orbital federation seemd to be going okay.
The key thing was EXO Pods, which acted as both personal living spaces and orbital transport vehicles.
Yours is coming due for repairs at the end of the month. Your bank account isn't ready for that, and you don't want to go back to selling half your EXO's power to pay that debt off.
Seems simple enough, hydroponic plants aren't hard to deliver with an EXO Pod.
You shift, wiggle and clamber over to your EXO's nav panel and type in Aquaponics Depo into the search, selecting the only result.
The EXO won't move until you strap into the intertial compensation travel seat. Something the squares that built these considered to be a safety feature. Sigh. You grap a no-crumble breakfast nutrabar as you lever yourself off of a handle, and strap yourself into your travel seat.
After a 2 minute thruster burn, and 21 minutes of waiting, as your EXO drifts through sapce, and a 30 second decel burn, you arrive at the Aquaponics Depo.
Depot Reply: "All right. The order has already been paid for, and you're listed as the authored pickup agent, and you're CRATE certified. Looks like everything is in order"
It was a funny bit of irony that computers could do the orbital travel computations, but when it came to moving big boxes through tight spaces, you still needed a human in the loop. Having to put so many resources into life support really put a damper on the general availability of heavy computation in space, and CRATE depots could get really messy.
Today, though, things seemed simple enough, just set up the link drive between the CRATE and your EXO's controler, and take things nice and slow. With a few thrusts, you get the CRATE clear of the depo and into open space. At least when delivering a CRATE, the EXO could be towed, using the fuel of the CRATE. You link up your EXO to the CRATE, and set the CRATE's nav command for Mx Warbuckle's EXO.
Hail: "XI-473 hailing MW-203: Mx Warbuckle. This is your CRATE delivery of hydro-spinach, ETA of 10 minutes, please advise on deliver location, over"
The orbital radoi was silent for a bit. Another consequence of the paucity of computation in space: Storage and available frequences were at a premium, so almost all voice communicaiton is real time. At least HAMs figured out a decent cooperative protocol for that.
"XI-473 this is MW-203". background kitchen noises "Please unload the CRATE of Hydro-Spinach in the rear of the rear of the residence. That will be sol-side at your ETA, over"
"Copy that MW-203, XI-473 to unload CRATE in sol-side loading bay, ETA 8 minutes, over".
The loading bay has a lot of random foodstuffs around: Freeze dried sweet potatoes, bags of rice, canned lab meat. Mx Warbuckle must be preparing for some guests. One space is cleared out, and has a raster panel with "Spinach here" on it. You're probably not going to meet Mx Warbuckle in person. As long as their credits cash out, though, you don't care too much about putting a face to the name.
You unload the hydrospinach, setting it in a neat stack in front of the raster panel. Back to your EXO pod, you take the CRATE to the nearest depo.
And, with that, you set your EXO into an orbit that'll give you some hours of darkness to sleep.