Haha well i'm no reference for skill, so that has to be taken into account as well :p
but yeah the enemies on the way to station 2 felt a bit tough compared to the starter ship and i don't know if you could farm to upgrade if you collected drops from ships and work towards better hardware (i suppose the numbers on the Postal ships are prices for stuff you can buy ?)
Hope i didn't come as too harsh on the game cause that wasn't the intent, like i said the game has qualities despite the difficulty :)