Now that you have your mining cruiser, you are officially no longer a rookie. But you still have much to do before becoming the ultimate miner. In order to progress to the next stage of your mining career, you will need to add some advanced skills, and make a decision on what your next mining ship will be. Let's start by looking at what ship choices you have for your next mining ship.
Up till this point, you have not needed to know the math that is involved in mining, but from this point forward you must understand the math in order to understand why one choice is better than another. I will assume max skill level whenever I do the math, because it's just easier to get a fair comparison.