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DerekL1963

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  1. DerekL1963's post in Drill, baby, Drill! (How to run a large mining corporation) was marked as the answer   
    Minmus and Ike are generally the best places to start.  Low enough G that it makes designing your landers/lifters easier, high enough G that you're not trying to run a mine in a bouncy house.
     
    I generally convert to LF, as by the time mining is attractive I'm tossing big heavy nuclear powered wessels all over the Solar system.  I also refine a little mono to refuel my RCS systems.
     

    My architecture:  A) a mobile miner that can land, refuel itself, and return to orbit stuffed with ore.  B) Since the miner is heavy and ungainly, an OTV that picks up the ore and transfers it to an orbital refinery/storage depot.  C) The OTV doubles as a tanker by dropping off the ore container and picking up a fuel tank.  (Because the OTV+tank generally maneuvers better than the big heavy vehicle it's re-fuelling.)

    Mobile miner:



    OTV with ore container. (It's hard to see, but there's RCS on the container to help with handling when it's loaded.)



    Orbital refinery/storage depot, capable of self-ferrying to Minmus or to Ike if I rejigger the tankage, initial configuration.  (I used Modular Fuel Tanks to reduce the oxidiser storage, add monoprop storage, and increase the liquid fuel storage...   this cuts down on parts count.)  The leftover oxidiser is just margin from transit.  The leftover liquid fuel is actually an important part of the system - it lets you refuel the OTV after it's boosted from LKO to Minmus and before it sets off to haul the (very heavy) ore container.



    Orbital refinery/storage depot, final configuration.  Ore storage tank in use, fuel tank (also rejiggered to 100% fuel storage via Modular Fuel Tanks) with the OTV docked ready to fill and head off to service customers.  The refinery and power systems are modular, and here they've been moved to a position that's up and out of the way of the main docking hub.



    (The non stock structural parts pretty much all come from Nertea's Near Future Construction pack.)

    YMMV, others may have other ideas.

     
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