So, I have a game lore-based theory...
I determined in my timeline-with-evidence post that Simon had been doing labor for the C.O.I. for his entire young adult life. We know he originally was going to be in Ava's standard-issue jumpsuit, we know that sixteen years between Filament Station and the events of Iron Lung had passed, Simon's very familiar with the C.O.I. (probably more than he'd like to be), but not with this specific crew or tow ship.
But... we don't really know what they were using him for.
There's an implication in the game lore I think a lot of people are skipping over:
If all planetary bodies winked out, and what was left were only asteroids, the first thing they'd be doing would be sweeping for these asteroids for chemical matter to synthesize and build with. They're asteroid mining.
Hypothetically, water processed from ice could refuel orbiting propellant depots. Almost every single precious resource we have in our planetary crust right now came from space; from a rain of asteroids. Gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, tungsten, etc. [ 1 ]
If humanity has been in space for close to 378 years at this point, there was definitely an entire industry for this. Did you know we're already mining asteroids today? No shit, in 378 years this would have been mastered.
And if I suddenly came into possession of a man who fucked humanity over, who was a strong-arm willing to do what it took to survive, and I needed to send that motherfucker to my space gulag for punishment, where am I gonna put him that's going to give humanity the best possible outsourced labor? What job am I going to spare one of my citizens of?
I'm sending his ass to the mines.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.