Death

Thanks to the advances of modern medicine you can live longer and healthier and come right to the brink of death and brought back, A lost arm can be Replaced with a robotic Limb.

What this means is that even after you are shot down someone can still come to save you and keep you from dying. But you can't keep coming back forever eventually after you have sustained enough damage from all those near death experiences you aren't going to be so lucky

After Death
But what happens when my character dies? After your character has passed your old belongings move on to a beneficiary meaning that you don't actually lose any ships or items as they just move on to your new Character Ship loss and Insurance is a seperate thing from character death.

However any reputation or sway with NPC factions your character might have had are going to diminish somewhat but the 'friend' or 'son' or 'daughter' of your character are still going to be judged somewhat by your old characters actions say they were a pirate and did a lot of bad things, your next of kin is not going to have a good time getting along with the UEE with that shadow hanging over their head but at the same time they will have some sway with other pirates that the old character may have been with etc

Refrences
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/engineering/12879-Death-Of-A-Spaceman