What do you mean by "rewriting Freelancer", precisely? If you could explain your goals in more detail, we could probably give you more assistance, or point you to the correct resources.

If you're planning on building a new game engine that duplicates its features... aiya! FL took a fairly large team nearly 6 years to build... even if you could re-use the CMPs, SURs <shudder> and other objects from the game in your new engine... I doubt very much that you could build something like this in a semester, no matter how brilliant you are.

But if you're planning a very large TC mod... again... aiya! I've been working on one for 6 months now... and it's getting near to its second Beta release, which may or may not be final... and I can tell you right now that building something like this is also not something you can just whip out- you can still download the early versions of my mod here on TLR, and boy do they look crude! I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed around here, but still... it's not easy to do something like this, especially without help.

So... if either of these things are your goal... I would have to humbly beseech you to consider tightening your focus- if your grades/graduation depend on the success of this project, then you need to keep it do-able.