They have a plan for users to buy content. And yes, you can buy news-ships for some game mechanic that is not even in pre-alpha.

The only time there was talk about user-generated content was when they had a "design a ship"-contest. Designer teams jumped on it, designed a ship that you could visit in the hangar instance but it's gone now...because they needed to rework things there. I wonder what because that ship was never playable....This is SC for you.