I just noticed this yesterday. It makes me feel like I'm wasting my time exploring. I didn't bother exploring until I bought the detailed scanner for the same reason, why bother doing a basic, low pay scan? I didn't want to come back and do an advanced scan all over again for that system. Now I feel the same why. Why rush the game out the door half finished?
IS it too much to expect a finished game these days?
*sigh*
I know exactly what you mean, and I feel very much the same way. But... I also have to see it from FD's point of view. There's lots of speculation that they're not exactly rolling in cash, and the Christmas season is a very lucrative and profitable time to release your product, video games included. They've gotten the game to a stable, albeit relatively bare bones state, and if they didn't release for the holiday season this year, they'd either have to hold out until next winter, or release sometime between and face the very real possibility that their sales wouldn't be as high as desired or, perhaps more likely, as high as they needed them to be to stay financially solvent in the long term. It's a tough call, and I try to be understanding about that.
Also, FD isn't like one of these companies that shoves an unfinished product out the door and washes their hands of it. They really haven't stopped (barring a short winter recess) updating, bug-fixing and developing the game, and they've said they won't for a long time (finances willing, of course). There's a new path developing in the gaming world, one where developers see a game as a continuous project, rather than one with a finite completion date. Starbound springs to mind as another example of this. In my mind, this means that things should continuously get better and better and better, and I'd take that over a game that, though it may be good at release, will only ever be good, never great, as it's seen as complete, and thus it's creators have moved on.
It's a tough issue for me, but I'm trying to stay positive. Just remember - if the game is a success, and assuming nothing else unforeseen and disastrous rears it's ugly head, one day we'll be able to land on planets, and explore. We'll be able to walk around our ships, and walk around those beautiful stations that, for now, we can only ogle at from inside our cockpit. Keep the faith, keep supporting this game, and God willing, this game will become more than good, more than great, even. It will be
amazing 
