I have personal issues wth "Andromeda"

Apples and oranges.  The hurdles involving creating a survivable environment on the ocean floor are different from traveling through space.

Now if Musk wanted to skip Mars, the asteroid belt, and the outer planets and go straight to Alpha Centauri, then yeah, I'd think that was stupid. 

Which makes you wonder how they were chosen.  I mean, just because you want to go doesn't mean you're qualified.  This is why I think the bigger failure is that BioWare is likely not going to continue and give us explanations that might have been forthcoming.

Primitives don't do very well in cryo.

I concur, to an extent, given that like 99% of people are still in cryo at the end of the game.  So, let's look at Tann.  He was originally DEPUTY ASSISTANT (not even the actual assistant, but someone trained well enough to stand in) for Revenue Management.  I imagine he might have been very good with numbers and probably could have easily stepped into the role of Assistant for Revenue Management had that become necessary.  Being good with finances does not make a person equipped to manage a colonization effort, much less one that came under siege.  The real problem with him was that he was too stubborn to acknowledge that fact rather than appoint someone in his stead who was probably better suited (like Kesh, but his racism against the krogan prevented that).  Sloane was not equipped to be anything more than security.  Her anger issues made her a liability and, much like on Kadara, I imagine she would have become a tyrant over time.

Addison, well, there's no real excuse other than that she panicked and was afraid if she rocked the boat any further that they'd literally sink. 

Spender?  Someone should have shot him long ago but...see Addison for why she didn't do it.

The reality is that there almost certainly qualified people, but they were either exiled for letting their emotions control their behavior or still in cryo.  Also, if you staged a protest to get your mom unfrozen, you literally are incapable of understanding just how precarious your very existence is and how few resources are available.  Those people should be banned from positions of power (assuming they were ever slated).  Now, I don't think a chemist should have been made into a bartender, but I do believe that was just BioWare writers making fun of Dutch.

IIRC it's tidal locked to a gas giant and another moon.

Vacuum, radiation, heat, not to mention the propulsion needed to get there...