Well, for the asteroids, as long as you don't put pipes in them, you could load asteroid "maps", placing them randomly in space in areas without a /mob nearby.
To do this, maybe create an asteroid spawn marker, and place them around the map out in space. at random times, go through them all, and any one without a /mob in range(15), add to a list. If the list is not empty, pick() one from the list and run the map loader on a random asteroid file, to insert an asteroid into the game. Adding a small random offset to the position would also be useful.
From this, special asteroids could be theoretically be created with nearly arbitrary map components, for example, an asteroid-ship with a hull breach and a suffocated syndicate, with one random traitor item. This would give interesting plot even to extended rounds, since the miners find it, and must decide if they are going to report it to the captain, or steal the stuff.
Asteroids should give a "drifting" message about 2 or 3 minutes after arriving, and shortly after, disappear, taking all items but not living /mobs with it. Oh, and the nuclear disk shouldn't go either.
They could be minable, with the first hit taking out the "wall", and the second removing the "floor", and should be made of 4-20 pieces of asteroid.
Asteroid turfs should have a distinct file, and have at least 16 distinct states, depending on what sides are touching, to result in a more drastic effect than this somewhat unnessecary example from SS81 where only a line or two vary between versions.
When they disappear, only stuff on an asteroid-turf within range(10) of the spawn should be removed, as mentioned excluding live players and the nuclear disk or disk replacement.
Edit:
This is the resulting effect, but with a "natural" rough appearance, it would be even more drastic.