I have to wonder if you can customize your character and see your customized character in first person when you get into the cockpit, or if everybody is the "same person". Also, I wonder whether you can scramble into the cockpit faster (perhaps by holding the sprint key) as you would in a life-or-death situation. Still, that is a pretty epic feature.
There was also a comment mentioning another space game in development, which looks interesting:
Limit Theory (Though it doesn't look as good overall, and will probably be singleplayer only, it might be fun to play for it's own reasons.)