I’d say part of the problem for Andromeda was that everyone else got there first in terms of colonization; the player isn’t exploring a new location, untouched by colonists, they’re going to an established settlement and exploring around that instead.
Oh, it’s a great book. Or at least, I liked it a lot. The library mulching was opposed by most of the characters.
This reminds me of the book Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge. In it, a company uses a mulcher to grind down all the books and shelves in a library, then uses scans of the scraps to reassemble the books in digital form for an AR version of the library.
Our development branch is “working”, then we have specific dated snapshots where we run our datasets through our programs.