I do wonder what they'll have out in the dark, and I'm hoping we'll be able to do exploration without stargates-- y'know, launch a 'cynosural probe' to a nearby star, light the beacon after it travels however long. If we assume 12 AU/S steady, it's ~89 minutes per light year. New Eden's stars are sort of, uh, a bit too close together, but we can easily assume a probe would hit its destination within a few hours.
I suspect that the Donner Party reference involves one-way trips into barren systems, or systems with cyno inhibitors, and so on. I wouldn't doubt that we'll be entering another mausoleum, and that CCP'll have a lot of fun with the existing abandoned infrastructure and system effects.