That's what I'm doing from now on, and I hope others do too so maybe it'll make CIG work faster.

They have like what 400 employees, and of that 5 to 10 of them make ships. Put them to help build the game's core which is the main problem in my opinion. Nobody asked for The Aegis Hammerhead, but nnnnooooo they need more ships to sell that won't be flyable yet for maybe a year. lol

Honestly, this is what I've been doing with most early access games these days. I stuck from late 2013 with Starbound, right up to it's final 1.0 release in 2016, and that felt like a long time (despite it being shorter than SC's). By the time it reached 1.0 I felt rather drained, mostly because I'd played all there was to do, my imagination isn't as vast as others, so my building creations were limited and as a result, my creativity within the game was cut short (I still play it now and then though).

If I was playing SC since it's first demo to this point, I'm pretty sure I'd be bored and tired of the game. I find that we as an audience, vastly prefer being surprised and having a game release in a finished state vs watching a game literally being born on the drawing table, then watching us gain access to a demo and from there on a bunch of Alpha/beta updates that lead us to 1.0.

Gonna be honest, if they don't actually hire Jeremy Clarkson from Top gear to act as a spaceship entrepreneur, I'll be disappointed. 

Question to anyone playing the game right now: I haven't logged on for a while (I do download the updates, though). What does one do to get started?

I can't seem to get out of the space station and board my ships around. :p