And you don't see the problem here for the ED community ? The gap you explain here will only be larger next year, and the year after... You are saying here that SC is more able to deliver in the future than ED...
It's false to claim that ED and SC are not tied or that they are not direct competitors. They are on the exact same niche since EDO : beautiful space MMO with FPS (exploration+combat) and no building mechanics. And they aim at the same gameplays. NMS, DU or SE are builiding game, it's another niche. And X series are not MMO. And MMO have one huge constraint, they consume a lot of playing time of their players, so except for the few players who have a lot of free time, it's often one MMO only, not two of the same genre at the same time.
And when you look closely to what ED have over SC on the tech part, appart from the server meshing everything ED have is easily doable by CIG now in the same state as ED. Server meshing is the last big tech that ED have over SC. Even the billion planets can be done by CIG once server meshing will be done if they just decide to procedurally create them like ED and pop random stations/caves missions on them.
On the contrary, when you list the tech SC have over ED, it is much more worrying. Streaming assets, nested grids, ship interiors, EVA in 0 g, VR on foot ready, Vulkan coming, ray marching light, FOIP, VOIP, huge shaders implementation, extended players movement (prone, crouch, climb ladder), full combined arm, weather, volumetric clouds, ocean...
The day SC will release it's second system will be hard on the ED community.