I'm like 90% certain they planned on a method to travel between systems without jumping or fast traveling.

He3 was supposed to be collected for jumping. However, if you run out near a planet that doesn't have any, it would be very difficult to get anywhere. It would also mean one of the very first things any user would have to do is set up an outpost for he3 or buy a lot of it from vendors.

If there was a way to travel between planets and systems, even if it took a few minutes, new users could at least play around wherever they are and eventually set up an outpost to speed up the process. Maybe it would only be reasonable for planet-to-planet within the same system, but you would be able to find he3 somehow.

Also, the whole thing with jumping to a new system. If your travel path includes another system that you haven't visited yet, you have to stop there first. It doesn't make much sense from a gameplay perspective unless they planned on having users actually travel it.