Your post reminded me of an experience I had when I was posted overseas (USA, but I dare say this could happen anywhere). There were some Indian burial mounds about 3 hours drive from were I was based, so one day my family and another family decided to drive down and have a look. We headed off, stopped at a couple of interesting little towns along the way to a look, got to the site, wandered around, climbed the observation tower then had a picnic (that is when we found out having a bottle of wine was a bit NO NO but that is another story lol). While we were eating we were people watching as one does and something stuck us as strange. Probably 3 out of 4 car loads of people did the same thing. Drove into the parking lot, made a bee line for the tower, climbed the tower, stood there for about a minute, then down the tower, back in the car and gone. Very few actually just wandered around, they were that interested in getting to their destination I guess that they missed seeing most of what was on offer.
I see this thread as something akin to what we experience at that burial site. This isn't a discussion about exploration, it is a discussion about destination. Some players just want to get to where they have decided they must be, and they want to do it with the minimal time and effort. Others are quite content to meander through space, stopping to have a look at any interesting things they see along the way. Each have their merits of course. But without those that want to meander, that are curious about what is around them, we would not know about half the content of the game. No generation ships would have been found unless someone decided they this system deserved a look. No unique planets, all those things that players want to rush to see, wouldn't have been found unless someone took the time to go and look for them.