I wouldn't mind visiting space as long as they stay true to source material. But I'd rather not see any dlc for this game. Either put it on release version, solid expansion (20-30 hours) or just save it for sequel.
Also length of the trip shouldn't be a problem. Story-telling in games should be able to handle skipping days, months even years (Dragon Age 2).
But if not directly contact with space maybe we could see about it in news and files. I personally like me some mystery so maybe there could be discovery of some spaceship that vanished some years ago or ship returns to Earth with everybody on board dead. Then maybe you could be part of solving the mystery somehow.
Thinking here bit something like the tanker from Bloodlines.
I may sound controversial in this aspect, but I always believed adventure genre mixes quite well with RPG one. Solving mysteries and such can be some form of side-quests related to the overall universe of the game, and able to add deep to it.
Space is a difficult topic to use, because it can go quite terror and amazing or boring and cheesy. That's one of the bad aspects of Star Trek, it had great topics and stories but it had too cheesy moments to take it as serious. But don't worry, Star Wars made it worse with some kind of space samurais with tons of stuff from children adventure books (and gone even worse with new stuff, I'm "excited" to see what kind of absolute and patetic bullshit Disney and EA is going to make).
Here there is my opinion about what I think are some nice examples from classic science fiction movies that make good use of space in their plots, even if they have different flaws that can be discussed in a very lenghty way:
- Silent Running: The script could be better in many ways, but the essence is correct. There's a contradiction by the main character, and a critic to the stupid and retarded selfish attitude we humans can have.
- Moon
- The Andromeda Strain
- Serenity
- Forbidden Planet: It's cheesy as hell for today standards, but it's an old movie and has an interesting cyberpunk-like plot.
- Outland
...
For example, some abilities or contacts would only be done by doing certain risky and mysterious missions. There you will need to investigate, talk others and be smart in some way.
Of course, I'm more of an adventure game nerd than a RPG guy and role-playing is new to me but attracting in many ways. But fantasy is too boring to my pseudo-scientific mind, so I prefer Cyberpunk and geekish sci-fi stuff (I need to check about possible complex role-playing games about other stuff like politics, but Risk is too childish to me).