It was an episode of "Due South" that launched me on a googling spree on the subject...
The part that sounds wrong about hauling ore to or from Delta Vega is the sheer distances involved in getting it to the user. But perhaps Delta is part of a robotic mining network that involves several nearby star systems, and ore is being taken from Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and the others to the centrally located Alpha Vega for refining before being shipped to civilized space? Perhaps there's some crew at Alpha, too, even if the mines and the ore ships are automated? And perhaps it's for this crew, rather than for random passersby or past or future colonists, that the crew facilities exist on the mining stations?
Timo Saloniemi
The part that sounds wrong about hauling ore to or from Delta Vega is the sheer distances involved in getting it to the user. But perhaps Delta is part of a robotic mining network that involves several nearby star systems, and ore is being taken from Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and the others to the centrally located Alpha Vega for refining before being shipped to civilized space? Perhaps there's some crew at Alpha, too, even if the mines and the ore ships are automated? And perhaps it's for this crew, rather than for random passersby or past or future colonists, that the crew facilities exist on the mining stations?
Timo Saloniemi