I did it because i can
On a mission to go where no man was before...
I shared this because i thought the statistics are useful fore somebody. In my calculations i may got ~10k for a scanned system.
Although i did not make the journey primary for the money i hoped the invested time and the travelled distance would get more rewards.
I was not criticizing you for disliking astronomy.
Astronomy, like roasted chicken or football, are things people like or dislike, nothing wrong with either. But to enjoy space exploration/tourism/travel, at least some fondness for astronomy is necessary to be able to enjoy it.
Where others see a rock, I see a large moon. Where others see an orange marble, I see a red hypergiant. Where others see a bright ball, I see Rigel, where others see a blob of bright pixels, I see a stellar nursery, where others see a colored background, I see the Eta Carinae nebula. Same for everything else. Where others see a biug rock, I see Mount Vesuvius, where others see a bunch of trees, I see the Amazon, etc.
In the end, all are seeing the same things, it is your own personal interest/fascination with the things you are seeing that makes the difference between enjoying what you see or dismiss it as trivial.
I agree that exploration payouts are terrible, especially terrible considering how much money pours from the skies in the bubble for very little work. At least the rarer celestial bodies should yield higher payouts for detailed scans. And yes, stuff to find like remnants of ancient civilizations or even alien species (wqhich are coming it seems) would make it more appealing. But even still, such stuff would be incredibly hard to find. How hard would be to find remnants of some alien city on some planet in one of 4 billion systems? There could already be such things in the game, and people wouldn't find them for dozens of years.
