I'm not so sure that was just about fun. It came out that the pirates only did it that time because they were paid to. One or two individuals funded the operation just to get attention, or out of jealousy, I'm not sure the exact reason, but it wasn't "just to have fun", in fact, the individual in charge wasn't even present at the time. But from the individual pirates' point of view, it was about money. They were paid and they were probably told they'd have a chance of getting big loot. When you're talking about spending more than $200 real dollars for literally two or three minutes of using auto-tool "just for fun", it's not something you'll do again unless it's REALLY fun. Now, it's probably true that they had the most fun while they were waiting and flying around in formation with 15 quads, anticipating the event. That would be fun, but ofc they were getting paid to do it too... and you can have that kind of fun without spending a lot of money, you just need some friends.
Think about the first hussk battle... it gave people a couple hours of wild fun (so I hear) and yet afterward, we had quite a few people angry, even some wanting to rage-quit because they spent a couple hundred ped on a no-looter.
The point of writing all that is this: while I agree with you that not
every activity in the game is about money, if your average player is spending significant peds in a very short amount of time, I really do believe they want at least a chance of a big profit.
But back to the original topic, with nearly all of the motherships and privateers active now, even if they have to fly at sub warp the whole way, and with so many owning quads, I don't think there will be any problem at all getting a significant portion of the EU population over to Cyrene on the week of its release. In fact, because the cost of flying is so much less than the 40 ped TP fees, I'd expect more to go than went to the other planets' openings.
Sure, pirates might have a field day with all the inexperienced flyers out there that week. But on the other hand, about half the pirates are in space on any given day. About 5% of the anti-pirate ships are out there on any given day (just a wild guess). If you look at it that way, it's likely the pirates will be vastly outnumbered and it may actually be safer than ever to fly. I guess we'll see.
In any case, there's no reason for anyone to bring lootables to Cyrene, so there are no worries however it turns out.