I've been following the Dev Diaries series for a while now and I must say I was very excited to get a chance to try out Starstruck Vagabond. Having played it for only several hours, here's my first impressions of it:
It's fitting that since you put so much time into thinking about the primary loop, it is the thing that represents the game best. Switching tools to complete tasks as well as picking up and placing cargo all seem to fit together nicely when creating the feel of the game. Similarly, I enjoy the cheeky bits of dialogue and think it really brings the characters to life. As of right now though, there isn't so much of a life which the characters are living, so much a placeholder.
As excited as I was to try out the mechanics of the game myself, having done so I am even more excited to find out why I should care about the world I'm inhabiting. Conflict for instance seems to be somewhat missing, as well as motivation. Sure we could simply keep on upgrading our ship ad nosism but what's the point? Plenty of other people in the comments have listed out their ideas on mechanics and I think that's all fine and good, but I'm more interested in the direction you'll take our character's journey.
Case and point, lets say I chose to be a private, apathetic vagabond who after discovering that everything I know and love is dead, desires nothing more than anything to drink myself to death. Some alien insisting on how grand it would be to upgrade my ship doesn't mean much when ideally I could find all of the liquor I need on the first planet I find myself on.
This is not to say I want you to incorporate the ability to go wherever and do whatever you want, god forbid you should fall into another feature creep. Like I said before, I rather like the mechanics of the game, but to harken on your own words we need context to care.
All that to say, I enjoyed the tech demo and hope you really nail some solid character motivation to marry with the gameplay. Otherwise we shall simply remain a recently isolated human doing other people's space chores.
Then again, I've been using "you" as a means of hoping that the Yahtzee Croshaw would actually read my nonsense comment about how I'm waiting for him to do all of the things he said he would. When put like that, this blurb seems a somewhat unnecessary, though cathartic waste of time. Almost like driving a space truck through an uncaring universe...