1. You can go through the outlaw den next to the republic base North of the datacron and get to it without going anywhere near the Empire base.
2. The 2 sandcrawler ones are tricky. The first is easy to get on top, but the easy way to grab the second is to press jump and then hold in the direction you want to move and you inch off the edge. Alternatively, if you are a knight force leap up to someone if they are up there.
But yes, the balloon and the boxes on Hoth do take a pointless amount of time.