I found a crashed fighter by investigating a distress signal. I claimed it and started to repair it. My thinking was if I couldn't use it, it might be worth a couple million units, right? Or trade up for something good. I had to get a fair bit of resources and discovered the surrounding area.

I placed a "custom marker" so I could return and continue work on it. I needed some components so I headed of to the local space station. Turns out the marker was temporary. I cannot find the fighter. And I cannot seem to get the coordinates of the area (e.g. The Plains of OMG, it's Hot Here) the ship was was in through the Discoveries interface.

So.... is it lost forever?

It will appear on your freighter when you get one (if you don't have one already).

Oh, I'm a looooong way from getting a freighter...

I just cannot figure out how to get back to a place that I have already "discovered". You'd think I would've wrote it down and added it to a map or something... :/

There'sa couple things you can do to mark sites you may want to revisit:

1) If you've got the blueprint, drop a beacon
2) drop a base computer (this has the added advantage that you can teleport to it from any teleporter)
3) Look through your visor and write down the coordinates of the location. They're displayed on the right side of the visor. You can navigate back to that location by flying in first person and watching the longitude/latitude coordinates on the ship's display panel. While it can be done this way, this is a pain in the ass.

Yes.
1) I was just starting out, so no beacons.
2) " ditto " " " so no base computer
3) I didn't know about the coordinates at that point. It was my second start.

I made a third start. I joined another GOG player's game but created a new player/instance rather than "importing" one of my first two. I started not too far from the other guy. I think he came over to visit.... I saw some sparks, like from a mining laser but I saw no space suit. Anyway, I wrote down the coordinates when I found *my* ship after all the amnesia stuff. Went exploring a bunch. Found a planet that was NOT too HOT/COLD/TOXIC/IRRADIATED/etc. Pleasant temps 12 C in the daytime, 9 C at night. It has, on occasion, very hot thunderstorms though, and by hot, I mean 96 C. But I have a base to wait it out in. DId some missions. I went back to the planet I started on. I used the coords and manually flew to my start point. It took a fair bit of driving (several whiskies worth) but I found it. The empty containers where there, the empty distress beacon, all of it. I was impressed. The cave I had considered making into a base was there. I thought it would have been "procedurally regenerated". Oh yeah, while searching, I found a crashed class B fighter nearby. I wrote the coords down so I can go back to it but it needs huge resources to be fixed. On the other hand, joining a "MP" style game seems to have severely reduced AI traffic in the space station so there are far fewer (nearly zero) purchase or trade choices. And the wreck has far more slots.... mmmm.... slots....

Sorry for that rant. But it turns out, you CAN go home again. As long as you write the coordinates down...

edit: fer spellign