Dear Minerva, you truly are wise. Thank you very much for the toughtful comment.
Your travel idea is very similar to how it works, it is slightly more complicated because it takes into account the Rocket equation with an hypothetical nozzle velocity and the orbital requirements to reach escape velocity (which are not 100% adjustable).
Right now is the amount of engines that decides, so it might land in the situation that too big a station it starts to be near impossible to move, and too many engines might be too hungry.
The idea of having all matter at hand is because you cannot harvest matter en route, there is no debris to scavenge before reaching the asteroid belt! The energy it is consumed en route, you don't need it all at one time. You might notice the requirement is in MWh and not MW ;)
It could be cool to have a slider to decide how much push the engines, because one should be able to decrease power, but I need a bit of help with the UI maybe. The same for the building queue, would be excellent and might try to work on it but I'm a bit afraid to clutter the space.
Humans already help, the building time is divided by log_2(#humans+1). Didn't want a linear advantage, I don't want to make come true the project manager dream of 9 women making a baby in 1 month :P
The research mechanics in my mind would be expanded later on, but the game stops before. Right now the cost advantage is given by the 0G nanofactories, that also divide the cost logarithmically (log_4)
Thanks again for the feedback. If you find time for another playthrough, having a leaner station and not overbuild engines helps.