Personally, I think that Frontier will (should) hold on to Alpha for as long as possible whilst still maintaining their promise to their backers.
This is because they know that within minutes of Alpha's release there will be footage of it on Youtube be dissected and reviewed by future potential customers and may be even those few Star Citizen zealots eager to find any flaw to draw attention too.
Maybe then not release Alpha at all? After all, it will be just one part of the game. Also you are too late with the program - people hype No Man's Sky now

We will need landing expansion to counter that
Small delays are understandable, my speculation is that they have hold up with thirty party for shop (payment system for example). FD, however, could came out with emergency update about what's going on and what kind of delays they face so we know when new shop will open. That would make lot of people at ease. No communication even if you delay for few days can be taxing to health of the people who wait eagerly for news
Also remember we live with assumption that alpha will come right after opening the shop, which might be not the case.
Within hours there will be online reviews, both amateur and professional, who's articles will set the tone for the ongoing development of the game.
Frontier knows all this and as such need to release a Alpha which is as polished and stable as humanly possible.
What I have seen in dev diary video it seems it is already very polished, much more polished than line of AAA releases and XR on launch. Also you really assume that most of SC fans is out there to trash ED? There are some loud trolls, but most of them are space sim fans, and for them piece of action with next gen AAA space sim, be it ED or SC, is like Christmas every day. No, I don't think these are reasons for delay.
Something else to bear in mind, look at the publicity that Eve Valkyrie earned for it's self, itself essentially an Alpha, has drawn huge amounts of interest and masses of publicity, by not only being highly polished but by standing out at the Tech shows as being the current ultimate Oculus Rift demo.
If Elite Dangerous's Alpha could be release to that standard and with Oculus support in place it could easily knock Valkyrie of its top spot and garner huge amounts of attention.
Michael said month ago that they're undecided about will they give chance to test with OR during alpha/beta cycle, however I assume they will sooner or later. Problem is lack of good resolution OR (consumer version is still clouded in mystery), so I can understand their dragging feet on this.
So I want Alpha now? Of course I do, but would I rather wait a few weeks and be playing it whilst reading how it blew everyone away at the next Trade Show as the latest and greatest Oculus Rift Demo.
I know this is alpha release date open speculation thread, however most of us expected shop to open on Monday. With or without alpha, it is delayed. As someone involved in server side development and sysadmining I wonder what caused this delay, and why there's no clear update on this.
Alpha will come. I know they have binaries
