Glad you're enjoying the game, and I appreciate the detailed feeback! Some of your concerns are already being addressed (at least to some extent) in the 4.1 update I'll be releasing very shortly. Others will naturally balance out as the game progresses (e.g. the fuel will make a lot more sense when there are further away locations to travel to).
Some things definitely won't change though, at least in the direction you want. For example, you say the Laurion artifact is disappointing, but it already has a huge impact on how long/how many loops it takes to do the rest of the content. It used to be 50%, and I had to nerf it to 25% because it was way too overpowered. Even now, I'd say it's borderline OP because while it's not necessary to get it before going anywhere else, everyone agrees it's easily the optimal stragegy.
As for Astrape's "fetch quest", a lot of players really enjoyed it, and I think it's good to have diversity in how each facility is 'resolved'. I'd consider adding more ways of achieving some parts of it though. I definitely like how the power portion of it can be solved at least 4 ways, and different people find/prefer different ways. So it'd be nice to get some of that into the other components, but I think that'd be difficult to do without adding a decent chunk of new content, so if it does happen, it'll probably be a ways down the line.