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I would like to build lightweight mining ships. The problem is that I can't ever seem to get the miniature refinery to work. The normal one seems to operate just fine. I only need to use 4 small rotating radiators and the refinery will always operate at optimal temperature. If I use the same radiators for the small one, it always overheats and eventually shuts down. Even 4 medium rot-radiatiors don't seem to help it maintain optimal temperature and it overheats and shuts down. How the hell do people use the mini refineries without any trouble?? I like building heavy but I sometimes want to build light too... and I can't do this for a miner ship. **Edit** I wasn't talking about the baby drills. I was talking about the small ore processor. I know how the baby drills work. They only work with a certain threshold of ore underneath. I already knew this. I mean the processor overheats...

Whenever I start drilling it makes me go underground, then once i enter into "physics" i get thrown into the air On Ike https://streamable.com/cbbey Video Above P.S. Jebediah Died

On Rura Penthe I am running a convert-o-tron 250 which requires 200 KW of Cooling and a Max Cooling of 750 KW two Drill'o'matic excavators requiring 200 KW between them and a max of 200KW between each this seems to be a total of 400kw required my base has 4 x Medium Thermal Control System fins - each with a core heat xfer of 250 KW, max cooling of 19494 KW surely this would be more than enough to keep everything cool, so why are the fins glowing red hot, running at more than 100% ( keeps flickering to 100.5%) and sparking? I shut down the drills and ore processing ( the tanks were all full anyway) to stop explosions happening. The picture below shows my base layout. Is in fact happeneing because all the tanks got full?

I have a mining vessel with a Convertotron 250, four drills, four ore tanks, some cooling, some batteries, some solar cells and a load of other stuff which you will see in the picture below. My question is - why is only one of my drills at 45% load and the other three at around 2%. The ore in the local area is 14.5% average. I don't fully understand mining and drilling yet so could somebody explain what's going on here? Even more confused. They all say ore rate 0.22 now and I stopped and restarted them and instead of a load they just say "Operational".

It looks like it's time for me to set up a Minmus Base, I wasn't planning to but I went and accepted some Minmus contracts and one of which was to return a sample of ore. Easy enough I thought, clicking away. Now Babylon K is in orbit of the Mun and has it's own mobile mining base I thought I'd revisit the Minmus contracts. I've already got a station in orbit and a survey sat out there. Errr, that Ore Requirement - I'm sure that said 50 units of ore not 3050 units! I'm going to need a bigger boat!. So like I say I am going to have to build a full on Minmus Base. Me being me I can't do anything simply and I've decided on a modular, expandable form for the base and I've already done a little bit of research right here on Kerbin. As you can see from the picture. It's based on a cross shaped module made of a micronode, girders, docking ports and wheels. Each Module is a rover in its own right and the docking ports, when modules are arranged in a grid do indeed interlock!. An amusing side effect is that the entire base can be driven like a rover itself. I may need to unlock a few technologies before continuing though - Rovemax M1 Wheels might be better. I thought about waiting until I could unlock the HubMax Multi Point Connector but I believe the micronode and strutting will suffice.

There was a mod that let you mine ore from asteroids and convert it into TAC Life Support resources, but for the life of me I can't find it. Does anyone remember what it's called?

For the first time ever, I took an SSTO to mine for ore on Minmus. I had to refuel once in LKO and once on the surface of Minmus. I then flew to the North Pole to mine. Once full of ore, I flew back to Kerbin, and somehow landed on the runway too. Mods: -tweakscale -mj -p-tanks -mk2 expansion Enjoy.

Started building a miner today. I found that I couldn't put 'Toggle Deploy Drill' on an action button as the option was missing. Only the start harvesting ground/asteroid resources options were available.

Hello All. I have established a mining operation on Minmus. I have 4 drills going on the craft with 4 medium thermal control systems cooling the units, and everything looks like it is running smoothly. However, when I go to leave the operation and head back to the tracking station, or anywhere else for that matter, it tells me that I am on a collision course and cannot leave without reverting back to a previous save. Anybody got an answer to this problem? Here is a picture of my setup:

Hi all! The short question: I'd love to hear recommendations on orbital altitudes for a refinery operation that will mine ore on Ike and refine it in Dunan orbit. The longer explanation: For the last week or so I've been playing in Sandbox, working out how to most effectively set up logistical infrastructures all around the stock solar system. I started by setting up a full-coverage Comm relay and ScanSat (the mod) network around every body on the stock game. I've done all this before, of course, but never as methodically and efficiently as I'd like. So far the four inner planets are covered, and various satellite carriers are nearing their destinations at Dres, Jool, and Eeloo. Now I've turned my attention to setting up fuel depots and ISRU operations, and have two flotillas of fuel stations, mining landers, in-system tankers, interplantery tankers, etc. headed to Duna and Dres. All un-Kerballed and drone-controlled, but with enough modularity to be turned into crewed vessels in the future. (Before it's mentioned, I know depots and ISRU aren't necessarily the easiest or most efficient ways to explore the system, but for the purpose of this save game, that's what I'm playing with.) I already have a clear plan for Dres; with an ore miner tailored for landing on the planet and another dedicated to the asteroids surrounding it. They'll bring raw ore to an orbital refinery/tankage station. The reason for this post: I'm not sure exactly what I want to do at Duna. The mining lander is large (by my standards) and can bring 10,000 units of ore from Ike to anywhere in the Dunan system. The depot will refuel Kerballed missions to Duna, and a few re-usable Duna Lander/Ascent vehicles that will remain in-system for surface explorations. It may also be used to send re-fueling tankers further afield, particularly to Jool, though a full Kerballed expedition to that system is still only a drawing-board notion. SO... any suggestions, tips, or other observations? Specifically, will I be better served to keep the main Fuel Depot/Refinery station in orbit around Ike, or should it orbit Duna? If the latter, will a high (near the SOI margin), medium (outside Ike's orbit), or low (inside Ike's orbit) altitude work best for my purposes? Keep in mind the station itself has no propulsion, but is configured so the Mining Lander itself can propel the entire depot (and is in fact doing that right now, toward a Duna intercept in a few hundred days). There are also several fuel carriers around Duna (most of them leftovers from the Comm/Scan satellite missions) that can move fuel from the depot to vessels that need it. I'm asking not just in terms of absolute efficiency (as in launch costs and fuel consumption) but also in terms of my convenience and "playability" (i.e. avoiding days-long warping to rendezvous various vessels from high orbits), and finding a satisfying balance between the two. I hope I've laid out enough to explain what I'm looking for in terms of feedback, without droning (no pun intended) on too long. Note: I'm playing with a smattering of mods, but mainly for aesthetics. All my craft are (virtually) analogous to stock vessels, so a full mod list doesn't seem necessary. Beyond that I rely heavily on KER and KAC to design and keep track of all the (40? 50?) missions ongoing right now. Your thoughts appreciated.

ReMeMber the KANTERBURY ! Ice Hauler from The Expanse; Stock Kerbalified. Oye Beratnas, Kanterbury be chowing A'rocks all cycle long. The SAS is pomang kaka so use your RCS for fine navigation, sass? Kewe to pensa? For the Earthers: This is a sort-of-replica-what-I-call-Kerbalified-version of the Pur'n'Kleen Ice Hauler Canterbury, from the series "The Expanse". While it's designed to look (nearly, but not quite unentirely) like the ship its based on, it is at The Expense of making the thing work reasonably efficiently in KSP. So, part count is a low, low 200 It's those damnable RCS ports. I've kept everything else to a minimum to keep that count down; there's plenty of room for improvements on this vessel if you've got a computer to handle it. This thing will probably accommodate at least four Class A 'roids, maybe even six but for now there's just two grabbers. With the launcher this comes in at pretty hefty 372 parts. Fortunately by orbit you'll have ditched 172 of them. Mechjeb can get this thing to a circular 250km orbit without too many issues, though you will need to help steer the nose to the correct heading a little if it starts to tilt away from it. Don't forget to 'Control from here' on the command core (as pictured) before launch! CONTROLS AG1 Toggle Clamps AG2 Toggle Drill AG3 Toggle Drill Harvesting AG4 Toggle Solar Panels DOWNLOAD Kanterbury.craft 238Kb DOWNLOAD (craft with launcher) KanterburyLauncher.craft 459Kb Have fun, oyedeng!

I put a surface base down on Minmus with a drill, but it's in a location with no ore to drill up. I don't really care about the difficulty of locating biomes with resources and such, so is there a way I can edit the game files or install a mod to make the entire Minmus surface covered in recoverable ore or make the drill always dig up ore anywhere at the fastest rate possible? Thanks.

I have struggled for quite a long time to create a mining SSTO that could get itself to Laythe, and fly around... until I can be bothered to bring the Kerbals back. The process has resulted in many failures, all looking relatively like this one: I usually run into one of three or so problems. 1: Not enough TWR to reach orbit. 2: Not enough DV to reach orbit. 3. Flops around on the runway until it blows up. (Or fails to take off...) I usually find it too heavy to take off, so I add more wings. I then find it too heavy for the jet engines to effectively carry, struggling to make orbit, or unable to get fast enough. If I do manage to ever get it into orbit, I do not have enough TWR to go anywhere. I have been inspired by the SSTO in this Reddit post but even when replicating it as accurately as possible I find it impossible to takeoff the runway, or otherwise orbital TWR is less than 0.1 which I find unacceptable (yet still without enough Delta-V to get anywhere). Should I try using the smaller refinery and drills? Is there anything I can do to try and improve my designs? Thanks.

I decided I want to try and get as much out of the Jool system as possible. For this cause, I have set up a Vall mining base that is capable of producing fuel for anything that can get into orbit around Vall, with the help of a tanker I also sent. I am in the process of designing a vehicle that can be used to land on the majority of the moons of Jool, maybe excluding Laythe and Tylo, at least until I get refueling stops there. How much Delta-V should a vehicle capable of refueling in Vall orbit need, for exploration of these other planets? Preferably, it would be a single stage so it would be reusable after refuel. I have currently managed to get a lander that has 5k DV and has enough TWR to land on Tylo, but not Laythe. 5k DV isn't enough to visit Tylo and return to Vall, is it?

So, after completing a Survey Scan on Minmus in both my Career and Science, I've noticed that ore seems to be in the same locations. There's 90 percent ore at the poles and one equatorial lake, and no 100 percent. Ore seems to be quite consistently the same. The wiki does mention that ore is randomly placed, but so far it seems like it isn't. Is this simply a coincidence?

Hi guys. So i'm baffled as to where my resources are going? i'm mining on a classE as i plan to take it to Gilly, and in 1x speed the resource weight from the asteroid goes down. and the weight of the ore tanks fills up. Great. All fuel on my ship is already full. the only thing to fill up are the ore tanks. when i timewarp to 100 1000 10000 etc the speed at which the resources drop from the asteroid begin to increase, as you'd expect. but the speed at which the tanks fill up slows to a grind and ultimately stops??? on my convert-o-tron unit, no ore is being converted to anything. everything is stopped. i have no idea where the resources are bleeding off to? i'm over 300 hours on ksp with solid mining experience never seen this before. the mining equipment and tanks are all stock parts. only engines/decals and other parts unrelated to the mining process are modded. is this a bug? Please help! Thanks.

Hi. I use hyperedit which i'd prefer as a mod but i posted here anyway. i'd like the latitude, longitude and alt for a good mining area on minmus that's 10% or more. Please help me. I'm just a poor little kerbal =(

Hello, Kerbonauts, i was thinking to run a new career save as a sort of oil company. Now I just need to figure out how to mine as efficiently as possible. So my questions are: Which place in the Kerbol system is the best for mining? Should I convert to LF/O/Monopropellant? Use orbital refinery/storage stations? Thanks in advance.

Hi, I recently began the project of creating a mining station in one of the craters of the Mun. a complete one, with mining modules, tank modules, and power modules. Of course, I had to launch each part separately and assemble them on the Mun. and there comes the trouble: when I asemble more than a few parts (mining, tank and power), as soon as the last part is docked, the entire outpost starts twisting and wiggling and jumping and then of course... exploding... I still don't understand why, I turned off every SAS, it still behaves completely randomly, so I end up with no mining station Any suggestion welcome ! Thanks in advance

Dang it, i've been planning this complex mission for weeks now and the big idea was to land on the water on another world and IRSU my way to full tanks. But a quick test of the vessel on Kerbin seems to indicate that if you're not touching the sea bed, you cannot mine. Is this indeed the case? In which case the whole premise goes back to the drawing board ...

It's 2100. For some reason technology has not progressed beyond 2017 tech. We have colonized the Moon, Mars and some of Jupiter's moons. Then a survey probe detects Exotic Useful Resource™ in high concentrations on Venus, in a pattern similar to iron concentrations on Earth. How would mankind go about mining Venus?

Hey everyone, just curious if it's worth creating a mining base on a planet or moon, and for what purpose? Is the best value to have the ability to refuel away from Kerbin or is there another feature that I am missing? Thanks, Floby

The Gold Standard! Version 1.5.2 (2017/06/18) (Now with full SCANsat and Galileo's Planet Pack Compatibility!) This mod adds the pursuit of gold and an extremely rare resource called Unobtainium to the game! Gold Ore now appears on planets/moons Gold Ore can be mined and smelted into Pure Gold with the Smelter Return either Gold/Gold Ore back to Kerbin for profit Gold is heavier than Gold Ore, which is heavier than Ore Full integration with Vanilla drills and scanners Vanilla Drills and Surface Scanner available slightly earlier in the tech tree Only 8 parts (Under 10Mb download), low memory usage. Get over that mid-career fund grind in a fun and challenging way! What is Unobtainium? Unobtainium is an extremely valuable resource that generally spawns on high-G and extremely distant worlds. You can mine Unobtainium using the vanilla drills without needing a converter in-situ. Drills mining Unobtainium operate much more efficiently with both a scientist and engineer aboard. Unobtainium is a little more dense than gold, so ensure to bring adequate Dv! Finally a monetary reason to land on Eeloo, Eve, Moho/Icarus, or any of the other seldom visited worlds! This mod is not meant to be an easy cash cow; rather, a difficult alternative to contract spam. There is no gold on kerbin, and be careful when choosing a mining site as only deposits of >2% (mini drill) or >1.5% (large drill) will yield gold ore. The gold ore can be returned for an okish profit, but be aware that gold ore is basically 9/10s ore. So there are obvious benefits to smelting in-situ. The Smelter needs power, cooling, and an engineer to function at its full capacity. Pure Gold is, by design and irl, HEAVY! Feel free to post any working ship/base designs! Note on returning with your space booty: Land near or on the space center to avoid diminished returns. Supported mods: - Scansat - Galileo's Planet Pack Downloads Version 1.5.2 for KSP V3: SpaceDock Available on CKAN! *ModuleManager included and required Planned Features Will be adding one more resource beyond Kerbin's influence Community Tech Tree integration Further Weight/Cost Balancing (need feedback) Change Log Update 1.5.2 •Packaged the latest version of MM to bring the mod upto 1.3 Update 1.5.1 •Complete Compatibility with SCANsat and Galileo's Planet Pack •Changed the way resources spawn on planets (more small concentrated veins, less large low concentrated blobs). Update 1.5 •Improved Weight/Balance/Distribution of resources. It should now be a little easier to make money, and more worth it to make a trip out farther. •Fixed the Unobtainium texture •Cleaned up files •Improved compatibility with Scansat and Galileo's Planet Pack (Thanks go to Jadeofmaar for helping me here) Update 1.4.2 • Fixed stupid typo ftw. Update 1.4.1 • Fixed a value that was preventing unobtainium from spawning in large enough quantities to be mined. Update 1.4 • Finally got of my butt and updated the mod to 1.2.2 • Added Unobtainium • Added support for GPP and Scansat Update 1.3 • Updated to for KSP 1.2 • Fixed a potential problem with unlimited output for both gold smeltery and stock miniISRUVersion 1 Update 1.2 - Updated some part descriptions - Slightly reduced concentrations of gold on Minmus - Made orbital scanner unlock earlier (The satellite targeting gui is disabled until survey scan) - Adjusted Smeltery Output to prevent a very minor exploit Version 1.1 - Cleaned up textures - Fixed radial attachment points - Added Mission Flags Version 1.0 - Release License The Gold Standard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This license does not apply to the bundled plugin ModuleManager. This is my first mod so if you have any tips or suggestions don't hesitate to leave a comment below.

This is my ship can hover it is for mining enjoy! please comment what you think! i let the video at the bottom enjoy! Video here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5lvAqdChDU

For quite a while i've been trying to create 3 kerbals on a SSTO spaceship that is able to refill itself by use of Ore / karbonite With a goal of visiting multiple planets / muns beyond minimus and mun. I've been very close of making one so i believe someone eventually will make it. Mods you might use near future tech (electrics/solar/nuclear/ ... FAR (if not mention that it wasnt used), because its more realistic to use it. TweakScale (if you need it) USG robotics (if you need it) Karbonite (if you need it) Asteroid recycling tech (if you need it) Mods for different cockpits are ok to use if you want so. no objections to other mods if they dont contain extreme engine hacks or extreme lifting wings Space plane should contain (besides the other stuff). Mining (ore or karbonite ) to fuel converters Drills Tools to scan so you know where to mine (or else you endup lost in space). Electrics might be based on Nuclear / Solar No tanking by other planes or bases allowed, its SSTO Most likely flight path is, to aim for mun or minimus first, start drill and refill fuel operation there. From there visit some other planets or their moons to mine, then fly safely back on kerbin What makes it hard is the first part, takeoff from kerbin and still be able to reach mun/minimus and to land there As you will need a larger SSTO design to house the mining parts, while larger planes have more mass and make it hard to reachout to other planets and land safely. So this is quite a balancing act. You probably start of with air breathing engines and fly to Minimus using your inter-planar nuclear / electric engine. So show your ships builds or youtube if your able to do it.