Old SWG player, I have questionsFollow

hello all,
I used to play SWG back in beta and for quite a while after beta but I quit a few months before the space expansion was released, last night I downloaded the trial version which included some space missions and I was quite impressed, am I the only one that thinks that NGE is a good thing? :P

My first question is that I never bought the space expansion or any other expansion for that matter, will I have to buy it to upgrade my account for space flight? I'm not sure if its worth me buying any of the other expansion just yet as I suspect they are mainly for higher level players and I want to start again from scratch.

Another question... In the trial version there is a rather nice space station filled with quests, now im wondering if the gameplay continues like this when we leave the station and start to play on the planets. I used to play as a master creature handler (yes I know they are gone now) and there was a few quests here and there but it seemed like the main way to make XP and cash was to do those damn repetitive missions from the terminals. I do not mind doing missions from a terminal but as long as they have changed ALOT since I last played, because lets face it, back then those missions seemed like they didnt have any thought put into them at all.

I'm guessing that towns and cities are pretty empty too but maybe I'm wrong, is there any crowded places in swg anymore, where do people hang out?, and what about trade, is it still handled by putting your loot on those vending machines? ok and last one: how is the jedi population... my guess is that there are many many of them running around since that now you can start as one :)

anyway, thanks to anyone who takes the time to answer my questions :)

I would do the legacy quest and be sure to do the follow up quests on corellia with the corellian security forces. They somewhat un-nerfed group XP so if you can get in a hunting group on Dant. Pickets and Grauls are decent. Kash has good XP seems to me mainly lvl 60 to 74 then go to musty for lvl 75+ quest. Most of these quest on kash and musty average 100K XP.