Not that I know of you just have to shoot little floating debris and tractor in whatever comes out.

You can shoot asteroids and then tractor in whatever is left after they blow up.
It is a type of mining.

Is it worthwhile? In Earth & Beyond you could make a decent amount off of selling minerals and gasses to the venders. In the Freelancer demo I was flying around in the debris field, shooting little itty-bitty things that dropped scrap metal and such, but they weren't really worth much. Does this aspect of mining improve?

Well..I am only know what I have read and played in the demo. The little bit you get fromt the debris fields is not worth the effort. I did read were you can mine for gold in the asteroids, so this may be more profitable.

Yah, in the demo, all you can get is scrap metal which only sells for 20 at ft. bush. Actually in earth and beyond, i thought mining took waaay too long. In the earlier stages of mining all the prospectable stuff was worthless (like 8 credits, maybe 15 if mined) I think later on the materials were more valuable...

*If you have a cat and a dog in the same house, will that be a problem? Of course not, you might just have solved world hunger*

there are more valuable things you can mine for: hydrocarbons, water, oxygen, copper, silver, gold, diamonds, alien artifacts and organisms... etc. Check the mineable areas for each new system you are exploring, shoot the lil roids and find out what you get, that or read the description of the roid field you are in.