First things first, if you are having trouble controlling your ship, hit the R button. This will set the ship to stop rotating so quickly, and be muc easier to control. I reccommend not doing the orbital mode because it is very hard and complex.
Upon spawning in you will pick your ship, currently you can only do the mining one. This is a great starting ship for what we will be doing to make money.
After that, you are going to want to take a look at your surroundings. You can do this by scrolling the mouse wheel. When you are scrolled out all the way try to look for little green circles. These are going to be the space stations and where we will be making out money.

To start of with we will be trading to make money. In order to do this effectivly, click on a space staton and pull up the trade menu. (NOTE: you do not have to be docked to look at the prices) Now in this trade menu, you are going to hover over each good you see. A message will pop up that says something like this "can be traded at space station x for % profit" or "No profitable trade route can be found."
Next, simply look over each good and see which has the highest % trade profit. Then, buy as many as your ship can hold and run it over to the enxt station for profit. (NOTE: Make sure to remember which station had the highest profit or you might lose money)
Now that you have ran your first route, open up the trade menu of the station you docked at and repeat the process.
After a few good runs of this you should have around 20.000 credits.

Now that you have a good amount of money, the first thing I recomend doing is building a fuel factory. To do this you should dock at the space station that you want to make this near, then open up the shipyard menu.
Next, place the command moduel wherever you want it. After that, attach a storage container to the fuel factory, and two liquid containers. These can be arranged any way you like. Very important step is next! MAKE SURE YOU POWER THE FACTORY. You can do this with solar panels or a generator. The generator is honestly better because it requires little uranuim to sustain, but it does need an extra storage unit for the uranium.
After the main body is finished, make sure you put at least one docking port on the factory.
Now in order for the factory to function, you must open up the connections tab. You can do this by hitting C on the keyboard or by clicking the button on the left. The connections look complex but are self-explanitory if you look at them. You simply match up the inputs to the outputs. Your storage container is going to be linked the ice input, the two outputs are going to be linked to the two liquid containers.
After you have all of this linked up make sure you activate the factory, and the power plant.
When all of this is done just add ice and you have both kinds of fuel.
Our main reasoning behind rushing the fuel factory is because it can get super expensive due to the economy in the game and having your own fuel helps a lot early game.

So you have your mining ship and a working fuel factory at this point. The next step would be to add another ship to the fleet.
The next ship is completely up to you. You can either have a ship for fighting, or a recycling ship that picks up scraps floating around (the scrap is the floating gray things)
The fighting ship allows you to do the missions about destroying enemy ships, which grant more credits and reputation, but are far more dangerous.
The recycling ship allows you to do the moduel retrive missions and pick up space scrap.
They are both good options and depend on how you want to play the game.

FIGHTING SHIP LAYOUT: The layout of your first fighting ship should be simple. The command moduel should be at the top. With blocks going down, to the left, and to the right. Think of it as looking like sideways B. The liquid fuel containers are going to go inbetween the lines. All of the storage and blocks in this ship should be filled with ammo. Make sure you but the turret mount first, place this at the top of the ship. This may not look the best, but it gives the most range. Hitting 3 on the keyboard brings up the range of the cannon. 2 allows you to control the turret, this is what I think you should use. When fighting pirate ships, remember to stay on the edge of range so you do not get fired on. After you get some more money, I would add a shield generator to the ship. This is not a massive amazing fighting ship, this is meant to be a budget friendly fighter.

RECYCLING SHIP LAYOUT: For this ship, I reccomend starting off with the scrap recyclers on top of the ship, with a grabber in between for the moduel missions. Behind the recyclers and the grabber should be the command moduel. Then the fuel containers on either side of the command centre.

REMEMBER TO NOT GO OVERBOARD WITH THRUSTERS, and also remember to place some on top and on the side on the ship. This will allow you to actullay control the ship and be able to dock.

Also, whatever ship you decide to make first, make the other next. This makes your fleet balanced and well-rounded.

This new update was made to explore. Once you feel comfortable in your own galaxy, head to one of the warp stations and explore other places. Pressing M brings up the new galaxy map and opens many new possibilities. Now get out there and control space!

I will add images and more detail to the guide, depending on the popularity of it. Please comment with any questions!