Yeah, but I'd only pick up Space Exploration if you've played through the base game a few times and just want more. What I've found is that it rebalances the game so the 'base' takes less parts (i.e. for modules), but it goes harder on complexity. Like, the number of factories / production lines you have to build for the next stage just goes up and up.

I think I got to a point - probably nearly 100 hours in - where I finally had two lines of products coming from other planets to do the next tier of science.

Another tip that I'd add is that you should increase the science cost, I found it easy to run out of things to research while it still took hours to expand things for the next tier, which in practice meant your factory just stops doing anything because it doesn't need to do anything.