I'm a fan of 'space sims,' myself, hearkening back to days of being unable to sleep and Gettin Shit Done. Awesome merchant times on WNOHGB. I enjoyed HSpace on Serenity before, well, Inara made me hate Serenity (my 'How to Fly' guide apparently survived from when I played up through being reposted/modified when the game had a website... oh how it grew from its days as a .txt I emailed to people).
I loved the system to fly around and find 'claims' on both CrystalMUSH and Crystal Dreams MUSH.
It is a mini-game. If done well, I think it won't prevent RP but can maybe enhance it. With smaller games now... yeah, it can be harder, but I also sometimes feel an itch on sci-fi games where everyone is completely stuck on a single planet. It just sort of breaks immersion for me.