TCS by mail is a long term game. I was involved in one over 10 years ago. I barely remember the details, but I know at the time the game folded I was maneuvering deep space fuel depots to help me get across the rift from the Tobia area to the Islands and inevitably across the Rift.
It's a lot of work because, at the TCS scale, you have a lot of bloody ships involved, and a lot of checking of designs to make sure they're legal. Throw in campaign aspects ala the Island campaign, and you start getting VAST amounts of money but you're looking at looonnggg build times.
I think it would be interesting to see some play by plays if a couple of folks just decided to do a tournament style TCS: 1,000,000MCr, 2 dice, 1 pencil, and a big stack of index cards. It would be interesting to see a play by play if two folks decided to throw their fleets at each other in a "Fancy meeting you here! Let's dance!" kind of scenario.
I think it can be played pretty safely over chat or IRC, with some kind of dice rolling thing (I know these exist somewhere, but no details). I don't recall a referee really being needed. And despite the numbers of ships, given the nature of HG combat, I suspect it ends or stalemates pretty quickly.
The detail with HG is that the game is pretty much decided at design time, since there isn't a lot of maneuver in the game. Most battles should be decided within the first couple of rounds, if not necessarily completed to exhaustion.
