The escape pod that you come down in can be used to restore your stamnia and health, It is better then the sleeping bags. Simply enter it and press space.

The escape pod can also be dismantled with the utility tool (be patient, it can take a minute or two) to recover some useful advanced parts to get you closer to building something like radar, or hoverpads. The same goes for the wreckage pieces that usually spawn around your pod when the world is generated.

I wouldn't dismantle the escape pod until you have established decent shelter, like a shed with power generation and a stasis pod.

Stasis pod is all you need.I have had a lot of starts without the pod showing up. This is on custom game settings usually. The pod and ship scrap gives you advanced materials for building a flyer or hover craft . In custom starts you get a lot of water or mountains. Making wheels worthless. I have had starts on an island more than once. The pod lets you build a 2 fan flyer from the E2 chips. Without the pod the large ship scrap gives you materials to build a 3 pod hover craft. Visiting crash sites close by for the materials is a good idea. I have lots of vids on YT showing my designs if your interested.