Is there a way to entirely skip the intro, so that the game puts you straight into the main menu after the shaders have been loaded? Even if you skip the video with Esc, the intro sound still plays, at 150% volume.
If you rename the file called "Ident_Frontier_EliteNeutral" in the Movies folder of your game installation this will skip the animated part of the intro. When the .exe starts you will still get a black screen for a couple of seconds* and then the static ED logo.