But even as Champagne corks popped, warning signs piled up. The first stirrings of trouble were rumors that October’s deadly Deimos refinery accident was actually the result of labor strikes that turned into riots. Extra’s spokespeople adamantly deny these rumors. But Extra has every incentive to play their cards close to their vest.

Speaking anonymously, asteroid miners (or “rock hoppers,” as they’re more commonly called) described a very different version of life in the belt from what we hear from the mouths of corporate recruiters. In fact, I had to reach back two whole centuries to resurrect a term not used since the days of Manifest Destiny to describe their circumstances: the company town.

“We’re more expendable than the machines we run. A man goes down for good in the morning, there’s six furloughed men in the towers clamoring for their spot by lunch. One of our rigs goes down for good, it’s six months on a nuclear clipper before we get a replacement from Earth. That’s two quarters Extra’s down an entire shaft’s production. Maintenance gets stretched out to make up for the shortfall. Things break, people get hurt.

“Mine tunnels are hell on suits, but there isn’t enough new stock to go around. ‘Production bottleneck,’ we’re told. ‘Make do.’ I don’t know a veteran around here without duct tape covering a shoulder, elbow, or knee tear. Patched-up party balloons waiting to pop. Sometimes they do, but Earth doesn’t want to hear about it.”

It’s easy for us to think replacement equipment is just a “buy it now’” click away, but Extra’s employees aren’t paid in money issued by any earthbound government. Instead, their paychecks come as company proprietary cryptocurrency. Extra claims this simplifies payroll in a multinational company with employees coming from more than three dozen countries. But according to Extra’s miners, the cryptocurrency has to be exchanged for dollars, yuan or euros (at unfavorable exchange rates and with steep fees) before it can be spent anywhere other than Extra’s commissaries and proprietary delivery service. This leaves miners beholden to prices set by Extra and leads an estimated 90 percent of employee payroll to flow right back into the company.

The same thing happens with housing. Extra currently hires Luna-based contractors to mass-produce prefabricated modular apartments. These apartments, which are not much larger than a walk-in closet, are then shipped out and stacked into ring towers on Deimos and Phobos where the gravity is less than 1 percent of that on Earth.

These prefabricated apartments are designed for single occupancy, but often house two, four, or even six employees working rotating shifts. “Sardines in a tin have more privacy,” one miner told me. “And they don’t have to share a toilet and sonic shower with the entire floor. Thought I was done with this after college.” He went on to say that mold, respiratory ailments and headaches related to excessive CO2 levels are common problems in the overcrowded towers as squealing, overloaded life-support systems struggle to keep the humidity down and the air mix balanced.