I like the idea behind the current dusty-looking asteroid explosions, but (as others have commented), I think the way they fade to transparent looks fugly. So I had an idea of my own:
We already have little bits of debris that fly off of ships when they are hit by weapons (debris01.pof, debris02.pof), so why not create something similar and apply it to asteroids? I think doing this would probably require a bit of coding, and I've failed just about every attempt I've made to do anything with the engine, but I don't think it would be too much. If it required a code change, I reckon some other related features could be added with not too much difficulty, as well. Particularly, anything that would require small debris-like chunks that (unlike ship debris) would not ding your fighter up would probably not be too much more work. (Sort of a "while you're at it" corollary)
What do people think? Feasible? Worthwhile?