Mining
At first I cursed you because I only mined one drop of ore in whole Eridani, but in the Systems with a real asteroid belts there where much more hundered tons of ore to be mined :] Although I still think there could be more - more trashy ores like titanium or something new that can only be sold for 0 or just be destroyed because its worth nothing ... And another idea to increae suprise-factor of miningbusiness could be to do more than one sort of ore into a drop.
Another idea was that every asteroid has always a chance to drop some ore, but it is very low so you have to shoot them very long and also look on the drops. Ferian and asteroid miners could continously do this on their asteroids collect the ore like salvagers and bring it to their station, but instead of accumulating giant amounts of ore, it just vanishes into the data-void. This idea may collid with some balance issus, as someone may just sit down, press fire & A and wait for tons of ore to drop.