In my opinion, planetary landing will be a part of payed expansion. Reason I think that is fact that planetary landing is something they can make "exclusive" to players who got expansion, and they can do it in way that you have to get some special shield/thrusters/fuel (or all combined) that can allow you going in to atmosphere of planets and land there. And landing and launching from planets might require a lot of fuel, so one would had to have extra fuel tanks. Especially if you plant to trade and carry extra cargo from planet, or planet has high gravity (gravity can also be restricting factor). And in that way, people who didn't buy expansion can still exist and play in same universe as one who did, and one who can land on planets. And having that as payed expansion would be logic from economical point of view, because I can bet that there won't be a player who wont buy it :)

But, I hope they won't rush it... I would hate if they implement planetary landing, and all we get are empty content-less landscapes where you can't do anything except fly around. When they implement it, there has to be a lot of things you can do on planets, or it will be useless. Here is couple things that might be done on planets: ** EXPLORING:**

• Rocky/Metal rich planets: doing sweep of unexplored planet from orbit to find some zones with high traces of useful materials, and then landing in each zone to do detailed analysts and finding exact amounts and types of resources.

Later, if extraction facility would be placed on planet and site you have discovered, you would get portion of that facility profits. So, beside regular profits for finding and scanning planet, you would get extra if CR if there would be facility build on it (option; that facility would be named by CMDR who has done first discover/scan).

• Earth like/water worlds: Landing on them and doing analysis for presence of life forms and potentials for transforming or direct colonization. Bringing back samples for extra analysis would give you tones of extra credits, but they would consume cargo space and would have expiration time, so you won't be able to haul them around for weeks. If later on that planet would be established colony, it would bare name of CMDR who found and scanned planet.

• Gas giants: Going in to gas giants and doing analysis would gather data about possible fuel scoopability of some gas giants, and doing so, when you sell your data, other players would have info about fuel scoopability on their system map.

** BUILDING:**

For example, once a month, for each faction, there could be a pool with 10 suggested planets that have been previously discovered by players as suitable for colonizing/teraforming/mining, and community would vote on witch one construction will start. And building of planetary base/mining facility would go in few phases (community goals):

• phase 1: construction of small orbital platform; it will start by building initial small platform on one of existing space stations, by gathering resources.
• phase 2: delivering that station to system of interest: that first station would jump in to next system, and would need huge amount of fuel for each jump, so once it makes first jump, to be able to do next one, players would need to gather a lot of fuel. Each tier in that community goal would indicate one jump. Final tier in CG will be last jump.
• phase 3: upgrading station in orbit of planet and protecting it: this would be two CGs; one for gathering resources to upgrade this small station to be able to dock larger ships (for example, first one would only have small docking platform). Other CG would be focused on protecting station by killing wanted/opposing faction ships (on other hand, opposing factions will have CG to kill as many traders in that system, to prevent/reduce amount of gathered resources)
• phase 4: building basic planet outpost: players will have to gather resources to start construction of base on planet

** RESCUE / SCAVENGE MISSIONS **

This would be missions that you could get at stations and it would be formed in way that you get rough last known position of some ship, and you would have to go and scan systems and planets in order to find that ship. Then you would either collect cargo or data from wreck, or save crew if they are alive (or if you wan't to be bad guy, kill crew and collect cargo). Some of this missions might be in highly dangerous places, so they would pose great risk for player who is doing them.

Since this wrecks would be placed on surface of planets, they might be discovered by players who didn't accept mission, and if one would find wreck without getting mission, he would then instantly get notification about that mission and will be able to accept it, but if that mission is accepted by some other player prior to him, he would see that and will have to hurry to return goods/crew back to station that issued mission.

This missions would be quire rare and would give high rewards, but pose large risk; ones that require rescue of crew will have very limited time frame for completing, while ones with salvaging some goods from wreck, will make you target for pirates and/or police.

** ATTACKING MISSION ** This missions would be focused on attacking some planet facilities. This facilities might be from opposing faction, pirates or some other ground facilities that require destroying :) They might be highly guarded be significant challenge for players, and even might be designed in way that they are almost impossible to destroy by single player, but rather task for wing of players.

But I believe that walking around your ships and stations will be part of free expansion is because that includes mechanic that potentially enable players to board and steal ships from other players, and that has to be available to all players to give them equal chance to fight/defend.