Currently there is very little reason for me to try to rescue other stranded spacers. If they told me some tales of their adventures and the things they've seen on the fringe, I would be more inclined to help them.
Had me thinking, what if sometimes you meet them back in the core worlds occasionally and they give special quests/offer free ships or high level officers? Or hell, one of the reasons they are stranded in the first place is because they were defeated by pirates and they offer to straight up join you.
holy hecc fleets being commanded by actual characters you have persistent relations with is something I hadn't even considered in the context of outter rim scavengers you meet. It probably wouldn't be that hard for the game to make fleets you find randomly in The Rim have their commander randomly drawn from the (a) persistent pool of extant captains you can/have run into in the core, affecting your relations with factions once you get back.
Like, returning from a scavenging run where you gave a stranded shuttle fuel only to be run down by a hegemony fleet who, instead of engaging you in hostilities open a comm link to introduce themselves as being in the third in command of the entire hegemony military, and the game gives you your reputation gain but also multiplies it by the station of the character you helped which gives you a huge bump in this case.
That'd be cool lol