Ok so as everyone and their dogs know my net sucks lol.
But while i cant be certain i do think that you can decrease the mining cycle by accessing other in game options like clicking on your mail icon or your ships stores and then returning to the mining screen. As i say i cant confirm thism but it might be worth checking out as once you get others playing they will sure as ticks on a donkey find any exploits that exisit 
Hmm, may be your internet connection as I cannot replicate it. When I return to mining, the cycle is still running.
The starter lasers have a very short cycle (7 seconds) so by the time you activate the cycle, click away and click back 7 seconds will likely have passed if your connection is bad.
Once we have lasers in with longer cycle times, it will be easier to test and verify…
Testing here with the same kind of speed as Prev shows that when you return (within the cycle time) the cycle is still running. @Droffy as you yourself pointed out the issue is likely the slow responses time for pages from UK<>NZ and back.
Once we get some of the higher cycle times running we can of course test those and should you find any issues please do hollar at us.
Coops