Just thought I add my two pence in the discussion.
I personally like the fact that you have to explore to find new minerals. I always play space empires 5 with limited resources. I like to generate aurora few times to get as little as possible of starting resources on earth, so I have to explore the system and set up new mining colonies and freight lines. I can certainly see uses of TN materials in the factories and buildings. When you start the game you presumably have the earth at its pinnacle of engineering, yet you can easily double the production speeds after just a couple of years using new TN factories. I can even see uses of TN in infrastructure. Imagine TN style railroads, super-strong city sized pressurized bubbles for colonization, extremely efficient sorium energy generators, elevators/cars/lorries using antigravity. Sure the civilian infrastructure can/will be build from ordinary resources but the neat, state sponsored stuff will be much more useful. As for recycling exploded missiles, that is just daft. The fact that the dust like particles will be in motion forever, being in space and all, the capturing and reusing them would be an impossible task. Most of the dust would after couple of years fall into the sun and burn. even after centuries of warfare there would not be enough dust around to even register on sensors. There is no need anyway, there is literary tons of minerals all around, why would you chase around for few microns all around the solar system. As for soruim the recycling is quite simply impossible, it being burned and turned into different chemical compounds. With any luck you may discover 1 - 2 gas giants with atmosphere loaded with sorium, all you need to do is tow a couple of refineries and place them in orbit around the gas giant. they usually have millions of tons of sorium in them, more than you need for centuries of expansion.