It is important to note that an asteroid may contain any degree of ore - never usually as a multiple of your mining yield. Sometimes you won't need a full cycle to harvest the remaining ore that is left and so stopping the miner part way through a cycle is required - this is the essence of short cycling.

Say you have a strip miner with a crystal in it, making your total yield 1500m3 per cycle of 180 seconds. You are mining an asteroid that only contains 30m3. You would agree that a full cycle is a waste of time for such little ore so you can effectively short cycle your strip miner (i.e. stop it part way through the cycle) to make better use of your time.

Knowing your yield and what's left in the asteroid (by the use of a survey scanner) you can make a quick guess as to when you need to stop the miner - of course the example given is an extreme case but say that the asteroid in question only contained 700m3 then you can say “well that's half of my yield so I'll stop it half way through” and so you've saved yourself 90 seconds, which translates to 90 seconds more mining on an asteroid that does have a full yields worth.

These are the basic skills required to operate the most basic of mining equipment, they are also required to be trained to a higher level later on as part of the mining barges and exhumers required skills as well as for the mining equipment used to fit them.

As you progress up through mining and astrogeology you will soon need to train further skills to get access to the more advanced mining equipment, mainly the gas, ice and deep core mining equipment (for mercoxit). These are the skills required for them.

Currently there are a few head plugs available that are geared towards mining, these are as follows: