The game is objectively less challenging if every loss or mistake is wiped away by a reload. I certainly save-scum myself sometimes when something really wonky or buggy happens, to be sure, but the effect on the difficulty and power curve is obvious. Your roguelike analogy actually reinforces my point, in my opinion: it'd be one thing to reset a crippled, unwinnable game, but simply save-scumming in that same scenario would obviously defeat the whole purpose of a roguelike! Ditto for Starsector and "the way it's meant to be played".
Reloading every time you encounter any setback of any note is basically just playing with cheat codes on. Asking Alex then not to develop new features for players who want the intended experience because you'll save-scum is, therefore, a bit silly imo.
But, like everyone has said: officer death could easily be just a part of the "iron man" mode or just simply a tickable option, leaving players who don't want that additional level of difficulty out of the equation.