Well, that's what I was feeling the first time I left the inhabited space, I was eager to leave my "scent" somewhere. Exploration doesn't pay quite a lot for the time you spend doing it, but this kind of things kind of make up for that.
The problem is resisting the temptation to keep going back and selling data. I arrived at Sagi A yesterday, en-route to the far reaches of the galaxy. It's a long way back, that's the only thing stopping me.