Kate Compton's GDC talk: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024213/Practical-Procedural-G...

Important to note that article was written 9 years ago and NMS has received numerous content updates since. There's a lot more to the game now.

There is, but the procedural generation part is not what makes it fun to me. It's what you create and how you choose to "live" in the game. It really is like the real universe - isotropic, the same in all directions - it only takes a few hours to be overwhelmed by how pointless it all seems, knowing there's an infinity of anything you discover elsewhere.

Once you build a base or create some goal for yourself, it becomes interesting.