Out of Pod Experience

That's pretty cool.

I have a couple friends here who aren't that into the game itself, but admit to staying mostly for the feel and visuals of being in space here.

Can't help with your telescope selection though. Good luck hunting/picking/shopping though!

Totally the same here, i admire space. It's truly amazing.

Orion makes pretty good telescopes and the 130ST is a pretty good starter scope. I would suggest looking at getting a Barlow lens and a laser collimator. A moon filter would also be helpful if you plan on looking at the full moon because otherwise you will hurt your eyes. Yep, bet you didn't think of that. Also there is a phone app called SkyEYE that makes finding things at night really easy.

When it comes to telescopes basically the bigger the mirror the better. Now keep in mind most of the beautiful NASA pictures you see of galaxies and nebulae are false color images so they aren't going to look that way in your scope unless you get into astrophotography and do some long exposures and photoshop work.

I recently bought Orion's XX16G and even with that big of a scope galaxies still look like grey smudges through the lens. They are more detailed then my old 3" scope was but for things like the planets and moon, yeah it's pretty damn cool.