Otherwise, some very smart person would already have a master database of stars created for more scientific purposes than Aurora, and then I could have used that 
I find it hard to believe that there isn’t already a better data source than that. It’s obviously moot now that the work is done, but I would have tried to find some real astronomers to see if they really deal with data that is that bad all the time, or if they have a better source.
I did a lot of searching on 'best star catalogue', etc. before going back to HYG. Each catalog is trying to do something different and is restricted by the technology used to conduct the search. For example, some telescopes don't work well at certain wavelengths, so the stars at those wavelengths are less accurate. Some are only interested in certain types of stars, or above a certain magnitude, or within a set distance, etc.
I did find this source, which has done some work on combining three catalogs, but it was the same cross-reference I used and still has the HYG free text for spectral class and Bayer-Flamsteed and doesn't link binaries, so not much advantage for me beyond the basic HYG database.
https://www.astronexus.com/hygBear in mind, that for astronomy, relative 3D coordinates in space or accurate binary separation are not that useful. It tends to be more about the night sky location, or optical separation. There hasn't been the need to build something to do what I need, apart from a game like Elite Dangerous, which uses SIMBAD data.
https://wiki.ed-board.net/en/Finally, its actually good to get hands-on with the data, because you get much more of a feel for what you are dealing with and you learn a lot when you have to solve problems and understand how and why things work in astronomical data. Even if I had ended up with nothing, the last few days would have been worth the effort for the education alone.
