Even though I am a new player, I approve of this suggestion. It's strange that NT, who have built their "empire" on mining phoron, still send their miners out with such an ineffective tool as a pickaxe. It's just good business to upgrade their gear.
I also really like the idea of connecting mining and R&D. As long as the Aurora is a research AND mining station, I will approve of more connections between these two departments. This will also give R&D a bit of leverage to use for more mats.
From a gameplay perspective, I think I would approve of more use of the KA. That's the first thing I get as a miners anyways, and the first run with the pickaxe feels like a hassle. Modularity here is awesome, and while there very might be some versions that outperform othes in a meta-perspective I will enjoy experimenting.
I agree that it might be scary to give all miners a quite powerful splashweapon, but I haven't played enough on the server to comment on whether or not that will truly be a problem.
All in all, +1 from me.
