It has been a while since I played, but afaik ypu can always just self-destruct the ship through one of the side menus or keybinds, and then you can either pay insurace cost to get the same ship repaired, or abandon it for the default ship, which should also respawn you somewhere sensible.

I don't recall if there's any story or anything else ypu'd want reset, the tutorial is standalone and since it's a sandbox I don't think there's much else to reset.

I find the combat & flight model the biggest weak point of it to be honest, and certainly light years away from that of Elite Dangerous.

i wouldn't even classify freelancer as a space sim. it's a point'n'shoot sandbox arcade game with a market. the story is great, the worldbuilding is good, but you could swap out the space part for basically any other vehicle-heavy setting without changing the mechanics. it's sid meiers pirates in space, basically. the flying model, being constrained as it is by the entire world being flat, always felt like a weird compromise.

personally i think games like Flight of Nova or Outer Wilds are far better space sims, but they don't really have most other parts of freelancer, like combat or factions.

the closest one can get in the modern era is probably the X series which to me feels better that freelancer but still feels pretty simple. if i am in space i want to feel like i'm in space. i want more games to go the Rogue System or Objects in Space route.