Your space faring civilisation should have provided you with enough materials and funds to start up a basic mining colony.
You'll want to build this on a mineral you can sell to a nearby space station.
If you run out of chits you may need to use the mining laser on your ship to harvest minerals that you can sell for more funds.
Your mining colony will allow you to more easily extract a useful mineral that can be sold for a high price.
Once you have enough chits you should upgrade your colony with more infrastructure to support a refinery and eventually a factory.
These will allow you to sell a processed material for more chits than the raw resource.