I completely agree with this. I would gladly switch 50% of my money making game time for some missions in the Legate, even if it meant to make just half the amount I make on trading and mining, time-wise. The problem is, getting around 5-10% credits instead, even from 4.500m/5000m missions seems to be indeed a barrier to activity.
For the brief time I've been in disco, what seems to be happening to other people is pretty much what happens to me. Players wish they could get on their corsairs/outcasts and do some mission grinding instead of the regular trading/mining, but it just isn't worth it, except for a brief change of pace when there's few people online. You can't really log and RP either, because people are doing the same thing as you are, waiting for a raid or some kind of activity to log on their sairs/OC, otherwise there's almost no one to RP with.
That could be fixed by a number of other measures, of course, as proper organization faction-wise and recruitment and so on, but I still believe a little mission buff would help.
Considering the necessary credits amount for the ship, equipment and a proper CA, I believe it could be buffed a bit while still keeping the "money sink" tag, afterall.