What about a "mining drone module" and maybe some sort of scanner that creates a heat map on top of the asteroid where it shows more (or less) profitable areas of the rock to blast away at?
Especially mining drones for ships bigger than the Cobra is really something that would make mining more lucrative. Filling up a Lakon Type 9 completely by scooping the chunks one by one isn't...fun...
If drones for bigger ships where implemented together with the wings functionality I see some great scenarios playing out where a group of players can head out to really profitable belts (with high pirate spawn rates). A big ship could then mine away while the others provide backup.