I'd totally be down for the idea of increased costs elsewhere (though I doubt it would be a popular implementation), but I would still like to see the data losses of exploration data mitigated somehow, as the priority here.
Unless absolutely everything in-game was revamped to some kind of 'hard core' game design, exploration data is too much of an outlier. Materials would have to become cargo, become tradeable, and be lost on death if not stored at a station/fleet carrier. Engineered modules would need to cost exponentially more to 'rebuy', and preferably only available at engineers outfitting, after unlocked.
