Spaceship-Mounted Mining Equipment
 

Ordinarily, mining equipment is described as such:

It makes me wonder--are these different kinds of equipment? Ore grinders versus rock powderers? What about scientific tools for drilling "carefully" into a planet to test for signs of ancient life? Or perhaps an asteroid cutter that produces dinner-plate-sized samples to sell as knicknacks?

Re: Spaceship-Mounted Mining Equipment
 

Realistically at lower TLs at least different types of ore processed would require different processing equipment to extract the actual resource you want. At higher TLs you might easily get multi-use mining equipment with things like micro/nanobots doing the separation.

Most types of mining equipment could be use to make the rock dust though.

The big problem with the mining equipment as presented in the book is that the mining ate does not go up with TL, that it would realistically likely do.

Re: Spaceship-Mounted Mining Equipment
 

My feeling is that it describes whatever TL-appropriate gear you want for mining operations. As a GM, you might decide that dust-mining gear and drilling operations are different components, and may work better or worse in different situations, but on average work with the listed stats.

And, yeah, the rules are vague and should advance with TL. That's a twice-told tale in Spaceships threads, and maybe Spaceships 6 should have had more of that, but what you get in exchange for the simplicity (unparalleled flexibility, versatility, and ease of use) is pretty damned important.

Re: Spaceship-Mounted Mining Equipment
 

I would include appropriate drills in the Science Array of vessels and probes that are intended to investigate asteroids or planets. This would provide things like the sample drills on the Mars rovers. If you want a really big drill for large-scale excavation then a specialized Mining module would fit better.