After a few plays, a homerule idea just came to me - and then I thought, maybe you might even consider adding it to the official rulebook, possibly as an optional extra? The idea is:

Difficulty adjustment

Rookie Mode (easy): after shuffling the deck and before starting to play, move the Alien card to the very back of the deck, so it becomes the last card.

Bloodbath Mode (hard): similar as above, but move the card to the very front of the deck, so it becomes the first card.

Also I’m thinking that it can ultimately allow much more fine-grained tweaking: after I will play a bunch of Easy games, I could gradually start with the Alien at 3-cards-in, then 6-cards-in, etc. all the way to the end, or at some point just switching back to the default “surprise attack”/unpredictable mode. But I’m not sure how to nicely editorialize this for the rulebook.

EDIT: Rephrasing ideas:

Rookie Mode (easy)
Bloodbath Mode (hard)
VR Mode (adjustable) (This is a simulated preadjusted mode, not reflecting the unpredictable reality of a true encounter with an Alien in the deep space.)
Deep Space Mode (original)