This sounds sick... I did a bunch of research a while back about stars back when I wanted to make a friendly version of the SIMBAD database[1], but it would have been so cool to make a 3D version of our galaxy and fly around it. Probably not as glamorous as it sounds, and certainly a pretty backdrop does not a game make, but still sounds neat anyway.

[1]: http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=sirius&sub...