Why is this game so unbelievably boring at the beginning

I got NMS at the request of friends, under the idea that we'd play together and have a grand time. But holy oh my god this game is mind numbingly awful at the start. Its so boring. I just wanna sail the stars and do cool things with my pals, i wanna explore galaxies and discover planets. But i ain't got the resources to do so, the gameplay is stale asf with me just mining stuff 90% of the time, i really wanna get into it but man this is a slog and a half to get through at the start.