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So let's say I have an asteroid with multiple resources, my question is if I mine out one resource, will the other remain? For example, lets say I have an asteroid of mass 100T. It consists of 50% [50T] Ore, 40% [40T] MetalOre, and 10% [10T] Xenon Gas. For simplicity, let's assume that all 100% of the asteroid mass is mineable resources. If I send a mining ship that has storage space for 55T Ore and only 35T MetalOre, and start my drills, I'm assuming the following will happen: The Ore tank fills to 50/55 Tons because that's all the asteroid has. The MetalOre tank fills to 35T, but I've read somewhere that if the resource tanks are full, the drills won't stop drilling, leading to wasted resources. This means I'll most likely have to shut off the drills before this point, but let's just assume my reflexes are insane, and 35.00T Metal Ore is all that's drilled. If my thoughts are correct, then after storing away all resources that I've collected so far, I should be able to send up a mining vessel that has storage space for all other resources that are on the asteroid (In this case, 10T Xenon Gas, and 5T MetalOre), and collect them all, right? Hopefully this example makes sense, because I'm trying to figure out if my thought process is correct before committing a load of time and resources to designing a MEGA mission in my Science Mode save. Mission Overview, for those who are curious: (Yes, I also posted this on Reddit, but I figured it'd be a good idea to post here as well, since not everyone on here uses Reddit and vice versa)

I am having trouble mining an asteroid attached to my new space station. The asteroid is as yet untapped. I have plenty of storage space for ore, plenty of electricity, good contact between the drill and the asteroid, more than sufficient cooling. The drill deploys just fine but when I click "Start Asteroid Harvester" it just flashes a thermal efficiency number then does nothing. The status reads operational, but I cannot extract any ore. This is my first genuine attempt at mining, so I assume I'm missing something simple. I would appreciate any advice on the matter. Thanks, Ari edit: I figured it out. It is kind of a long story though. I have two asteroids attached to the station and I already drilled out the second one using a different ship, but it took forever so I decided to build a refinery ship to make the process go faster on the second asteroid. I forgot to put the ore container on that vessel, and that was when this drilling problem seemed to start. I sent up an ore container and docked it to the station via a docking port, still no luck, so I assumed it was a problem with the fuel crossfeed, after playing with the docking ports for a while I decided to just send up a second refinery vessel with an ore container on board. When that failed I began to assume it was a problem with my ship that I was overlooking. The game must have tagged the whole station as ore deficient when I finished with the previous asteroid so the drills think there is nothing there. As soon as I undocked the other rock from the station, the drills fired up just fine.

So I'm trying to get an asteroid miner together and sofar I am having severe problems getting it to fly properly. For some reason the original version just falls apart. Like, put it on the launch pad and the side engines just come off. Here's the ship. I somehow got it fixed by spacing out the side engines from the main body, but during testing the ship can't fly straight. After maybe five seconds or so of full burn it seems to lose control, even with RCS on and no asteroid attached. Is there something I'm doing wrong here? Some other thoughts: Four drills are still capable of mining more than sixteen refineries can keep up with, so I'd like to keep that as a central feature if I can. Otherwise the ship is largely available to change. Cheers.

Hello, friendly people! The Junior Drill-O-Matic is supposed to work only on more than 2.5% ore concentration. if I employ this part on an asteroid, then I assume that at some point the ore concentration will fall below this threshold, and the Junior will refuse to work any more. Is that right? Do you use Junior on asteroids, or do you always haul the big one?

Given this: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/reconstituting-asteroids-into-mechanical-automata and my current contract to capture a class D asteroid, Anyone think I can turn it into a ship? and mine fuel my way across the solar system?

http://news.yahoo.com/luxembourg-just-announced-plan-mine-175200063.html Apparently Luxembourg intends to partner with Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries to get early on into the asteroid mining game, a most interesting development indeed. It could possibly be the start of nations (especially small ones that have historically been importers of resources) to jump up and try to snag a piece of the asteroid pie. Thoughts?