[Simlasa]

I've read through most of the Cthulhu Rising stuff on the website and think it's a pretty decent 'middle tech' science fiction setting. Chaosium could do a lot worse than to take it on as an 'official' one.
Military science fiction isn't my favorite flavor but a lot of people like it.

I'm tempted to agree that I'd prefer it to have the Cthulhu scrubbed out of it... but then I remember that Lovecraft was a big influence on Giger and his designs for the original aliens.
Somehow I think that it would be an easier sell of the alien menace was 'Lovecraftian' without being overtly related to the Mythos... kind of like Alien/Aliens/Species.

I'd be inclined to agree that a fantasy setting might be more... imperative, but I don't know of any similar readymade fantasy BRP settings that are nearly as interesting as Cthulhu Rising is for Sci Fi.

As an aside, High Colonies was a pretty neat RPG setting... the rules might have not be all that, but in the way-back we played some nifty mini-campaigns there (using Traveller rules IIRC).