Yeah, it's like space engine except: 1. It costs money 2. You can die 3. It'll take a while to get from the surface of one planet to another 4. It's not infinite 5. You can't change anything about planets 6. You can't explore moons/asteroids 7. You need to watch fuel 8. You're always inside a spaceship 9. Pirates will likely kill you while you're looking around 10. There aren't black holes

Well, of course it costs money, a lot of time, effort and resources were put into the game. It doesn't need to be infinite. It has 400 billion explorable systems, if everyone in the world started playing ED it would take over 39 thousand years to discover every system. ED is also based off real astronomical data and is on 1:1 scale of the milky way.

9 and 10 are wrong, but yeah.

Actually, I didn't know there were black holes in ED, I guess I just hadn't come across any. But pirates are a natural danger of the game. There's always a chance that you'll come across some asshole with a better ship than yours, or AI. Arguing against that is pointless.