Asteroid Belt Mining and Haulers

Asteroid Belt Mining

^{If you wish to read just about Haulers scroll to the next section}

Large mining corporations have become a staple business in The Delta Space and can be found dotted across the galaxy in the thousands. These mining facilities collect precious ore and other materials from vast asteroid belts found littered across space. The facilities are often closely associated, both in location and in trade, to other large manufacturing companies, especially the space ship manufacturing industry. It has even become common to see some of the larger corporations running both the mining facilities and ship manufacturing yards as one large interconnected business. These interconnected facilities often stretch on for ages, encompassing massive stretches of open space. Some of the larger asteroid fields currently being mined take days to traverse between the interconnected facilities.
In order to describe what an Asteroid Belt Mining Operator's (commonly known as Haulers) job is, we first need to understand how these mining facilities operate and transport their goods. First, when an asteroid belt is discovered, usually by teams paid by businesses and corporations to hunt down expensive materials, it will undergo a thorough scanning. This information will be studied to determine what materials the asteroid belt contains, if it doesn't contain what the company is looking for they will move on.
If they do find something of worth, with high ticket items being ores that can produce platinum, or pure platinum itself, the company will send out a new team to begin sectioning off the asteroid belt, essentially laying down beacons that pump out a signal indicating that this space is now the companies property and trespassing is not allowed. While this is being down, documentation is sent to any governing bodies, if any, that looks after the sector in which the belt is located, indicating that the company has seized possession of the belt for economic purposes.
Some systems charge large fees to take over these asteroid fields for manufacturing, and many even want a percentage of all sales. But oftentimes, especially with larger corporations, these charges are nulled or avoided due to back door deals and just plain skullduggery. Often corporations may even cherry-pick asteroid fields that fall in dubious regions to avoid any sort of bureaucratic and noisy government dealings. Once the site has been claimed, construction begins, first on the mining facility, and then on any additional manufacturing plants where required. Once built the mining can begin in earnest.
These mining facilities often look like large spherical space stations, with thousands of bulky large nodes dotting the exterior shell. These nodes are actually the mining drones that will be deployed to collect ore. They are ejected from the sphere and are attached to thick cables that run on for thousands of kilometres, a huge chunk of space on these stations is solely used to hold these cables when not in use.
These drones are sent out to highlighted regions, dictated by the facilities Haulers, within the asteroid field and once they arrive they automatically begin to mine out the ores that they have been instructed to collect. Once they have mined out the ore it is deposited into large containers attached to the backend of each drone and eventually returned to the facility itself for further processing. Oftentimes hundreds of these drones are working at any given time, creating an odd picture of a spherical station with hundreds of cables stretching out, weaving through countless asteroids in a strange spider web of cables and drones.

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The Responsibility of Being a Hauler

Here is where the Haulers come in, their job is to monitor this whole spiderweb of a mess and ensure nothing goes awry and if something does occur they are tasked with resolving the situation as promptly as possible. Most mining facilities only have a few dozen Haulers working at any given time, with each Hauler monitoring several dozen drones at all times.
These drones, unfortunately, do not have the ability to operate fully on their own, while they can mine out the ore of an asteroid by themselves easily enough, they have to be guided to each new region once complete, this is done by the Hauler punching in new coordinates of nearby asteroids and sending the drones the information via the cable so that they know where to move on to next. Also, the drones do not know when their containers are full, so the operators must closely monitor that situation as well and commence a recall when appropriate.
Once a container does reach its capacity the drone and the container are reeled back in like a fishing line by the Haulers and are docked where they are then unloaded, and given any required maintenance before being sent back out. Haulers are not responsible for unloading, maintaining/repairing the drones, or sorting the material found in their containers but they must alert the teams that are responsible for this task with any pertinent data from the drone's latest trip so that they can properly log any issues or oddities. Especially if an Abnormality Event occurs, or if the ship had been damaged or attacked. Once this is all sorted all of the collected material is sorted and then sent out via larger transport ships either for trade or directly to an associated partner's manufacturing facility.
Haulers are also tasked with ensuring the drones, and the cargo they carry are safe at all times, and therefore potential dangers must be constantly monitored. Asteroid fields tend to be dangerous and chaotic places, with sudden gravity shifts causing asteroids to suddenly bounce around, putting the drones in danger of destruction. If anything does go wrong with the drones, whether they become damaged or if they find themselves in imminent danger the Hauler must reel in the cables attached to the drones immediately and reinsert them into the facility safely for repairs.
Another danger found within these Asteroid Mining Facilities that Haulers have to keep a close eye on is the potential for pirate attacks. Often, because of the value of the ore being mined, pirates will attempt to sever the drone's cable links and abscond with the material. To this day, mining facilities are some of the most commonly hit targets for pirates. Therefore, Haulers have been given the additional task of keeping an eye out for potential pirate attacks. If they do indeed occur, the Hauler has to act quickly.
First, they must begin to retract the drones in danger, second, they must activate an emergency signal that alerts the nearest authorities of the attack including the coordinates, then, they must deploy special short-range attack drones to help fend off the pirates until the drone is safely away in the main facility or until the authorities arrive. Authorities prove to be slow-acting, if they even show, so some of the larger mining corporations have stopped relying on the "proper authorities" and have instead enlisted the help of mercenaries. These fighters are accustomed to fast response and space battle and have proved highly capable of protecting these facilities. They are usually housed in a station close to the facility and are deployed immediately once the emergency signal is sent to them. This has cut down the reaction time of the mining facility's defence procedures and has saved tremendous amounts of material from pirates.

Attempts at Unionization

Sadly, these Haulers are often underpaid and undergo extreme working environments often finding themselves working long hours in cramped stations. These workstations usually only consist of a small high-backed chair and dozens of monitors and consoles, making for an uncomfortable, tight, and not well-lit working space. Unfortunately, due to the designs of these facilities not much space was left for the Haulers as the cables, drones, and their collected material take up an immense amount of space.
Because of these poor working conditions, some Haulers have called for unionization and better working conditions. So far these efforts have not been taken kindly, with corporations conducting several under-the-table tactics to combat these attempts. Usually, this includes bribing members of the unionization cause with large sums of money, sometimes as high as their yearly wages, to drop the cause. Or they just find a reason to fire them, easy enough for corporations, and then find a new employee that is a little more compliant to take their spot.