Upgrading mining bases and cargo

[gnosis]

The only source of the ultra rate luxury resource is being mined by a small, old, and obsolete mining base. On its cargo hold there are 6-8k of valuable cargo. Now, with current market prices that would fetch a pretty big sum. How do you upgrade it without losing the cargo?

Also, how do you go about upgrading the hundreds of mining bases across your empire?

[Data]

If you upgrade to a versions that has more cargo space than you're ok, the current cargo is not affected. But mining stations cannot be upgraded currently as they are built by you but owned by the private sector.

[gnosis]

So my only choice is to scap it and throw out of the airlock all of that zentabia?

Can I dock a military ship with full cargo and docking components and transfer all of the stuff?

[Data]

No, it will not work. Also, even if it did work you'd need a commerce center as well but the game is coded in such a way as to prevent this (otherwise very viable) design.
The only alternative is to leave that source as the only one in order to force the private sector to deplete it. Then scrap it and build another.
Since the game has a problem with this you could also use the editor to bypass it, I would not consider it cheating.

[sbach2o]

In all of my games the ultra rare lxury resources weren't distributed in a meaningful way. Only a minority of planets received them and they were ordering just minuscle amounts. During no phase of those games (including late when dozens of planets were maxed out economically - most of them still not ordering any of the ultra rare resources) was there any danger of the mining rates on the sources for these goods not keeping pace with demand.

If it is the same way in your game, the amount of cargo you have on your mining base has a much lower effective value than you'd think. All you would lose would be the small amount of demand worth that cannot be fulfilled while reconstruction of your mining base is under way.