Can you pause the game in Starbound?

On the Starbound forums there are several complaints about the lack of this very feature. See a couple here and here (note the forums seem under a lot of stress at this time so you may have to reload a couple times).

It appears that as of this time in Beta Stage 1 - Progenitor on 12/7/13 there is no pause feature, but I was not able to find an official developer response to this.

UPDATE (5/11/14): It appears that this has still not been implemented in the game, but I looked for a work-around when a comment was made. This link led me to a suggestion that you always keep a chair around. Apparently you do not get hungry while you are sitting (or apparently sleeping) so you can wall yourself in and just take a seat. I put this to the test and it seems to work.

I took this picture before going to lunch and ate up to full at 12:29PM (Sorry if that's not readable). I made lunch for myself and ate and came back to see if my little Stitch was still doing alright. I clicked the Alt key to see how he was doing at 1:05pm and:

Still full. I left him a fire so as not to freeze to death, but with this chair and a few blocks I feel this could suffice for a pause-like feature. You might also consider carrying a bed with you so you can not only not starve, but also heal.

Download Process Hacker and suspend the game for later resuming. Tested.

http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/

EDIT: Sadly it doesn't work for longer than half an hour's suspending. Game quits with error.

With the release of the Spacefarer update (1.3), the game now pauses when the menu is open. This change is for Single Player only.

Minor Changes / Bug Fixes

Gameplay now pauses while menu is open (single player only)

Source: http://playstarbound.com/spacefarer-update/