A week ago I had 14 missions listed at my home? station, about half had bold titles and the othere half were not bolded but had more interesting sounding missions at least for a newbie like me. The ones that weren't bold had jobs like courier missions and miner training - I am guessing that these are Nation supplied missions?

I was just starting the miner training, it said go to Dau and at the station I was fitted with a scanner. Just launched from that station and I had unfortunately drifted into a small fight, and before I knew what had happened, a pirate had very quickly managed to bump me off (literally, no weapons as I understand it).

Is my character now broken? How do I get the more "interesting" missions again?

I've tried the only mining mission that's on my list but it had me hunting for Xithricite, and I never found more than a couple of rocks so had to abort that mission. Did try some mining without a mission, although it went okay, a bit slow, and I don't know whether the temperature rise can result in anything bad happening apart from the collection of minerals slowing down?

VO only allows one mission to be taken at a time, so try aborting the current mission. You cannot see the other missions if you already have one active.

Yep, I aborted the mission when I had no ship, thinking I'd be able to start over and select that mission later.

I can see 7 or 8 missions but these are only half what I had before I was killed.

Different stations offer different missions... mining stations, for example, will offer a greater variety of mining missions, although you can get all the basic flavors at your nation's capitol.

Some factors affecting mission availability:

* Faction standing

* License levels

* Completing other missions

Okay, I'll have a look at some other stations.

So when I am killed do I lose some faction standing?