As it was suggested before, there should be missions that use research points in the cost. An example for high levels:

Expansion Technology: repeatable
The astrophysics department is studying dynamic planet systems. Their scientific procedure uses interdependent factors, allowing us to find planets without the use of traditional scanning power.
Cost: a small bit of energy and a TON of research
Benefit: Expansion Charts (artifact, gives 1 random planet scan that has no cloak on it)

I don't like this:

I would rather that it gives a artifact that doubles your scanning ability for maybe 20minutes. (for those planet blitz's)

Also the mission matches the rank of the player.

Thus at rank 40 the cost would be expensive but it would also be expensive at rank 100 and ranks 200, ....

Actually, it seems Dan has been trying to expand scanning without breaking the planet cloaking (which has been a debatable complaint for some time). This mission would replace the Alien Star Charts... While I think it could use some tuning... I like this.

+1

However, keep in mind that this would truly only appeal to players who have maxed out research...ie... Kaos and 2 or 3 other players. Maybe an implementation further done the road.

I was designing it for epic level players such as Kaos so they could have a use for their research. I made it to only find non-cloak planets so that it not only benefits them by making it more likely to find an uncolonized planet, but also so that if it is repeated infinitely it will never find the cloaked planets of lower players.

Really, i believe player planets should have to be straightup scanned or hacked from them... unless they are "inactive" player's planets.