If KSP 1.0 has resources will that lower your costs in career mode?

[regex]

Hopefully the mineable resource won't be named "Karbonite" or "Kethane" or some other dumb "K" name.

Anyway, will it lower my costs in career? No. The cost of equipment will probably far offset the cost of fuel from KSC. I mean, if we were getting EPL then I could definitely see a cost savings, but we're just talking fuel.

[Aragosnat]

It should save me time hualing fuel to places Like Duna and such. As I would not need to refuel the ship in Kerbin Orbit then hope it has enough fuel to then transfer to the ship that needs it to return with. While initially it will likely be costy to set up. But, in the long run. It should save a bunch.

[keeper]

I doubt it should save much money in the VAB, fuel is cheap looking at it tbh, but I guess you could launch it with empty tanks and fill up on the launch pad, faffy.

A much better use is as said to save money in the bigger picture, able to stockpile some fuel up through mining and save on the refuel missions, I'm hoping for large scale fuel shipping transporters that kind of thing. hehe

I imagine the drills / converters whatnot is going to be heavy/expensive

[AbacusWizard]

The expensive part isn't the fuel; it's the launch assembly that's required to get the fuel off the ground and into orbit and up the gravity well away from Kerbin. Once I've launched a huge interplanetary spaceship, the biggest ongoing cost is sending up tankers to refuel it, because every tanker has to be launched--full!--from the space center back home. If I could keep re-using the same tanker, filling it up from (for example) Minmus, moving the fuel from where it's made to where it's needed becomes significantly cheaper.

It could save a lot of time, too. Suppose I'm planning on doing a lot of stuff in the Jool system. Instead of bringing all the fuel I'll ever need with me, my first mission could be setting up some mining and fuel production infrastructure. That way I can make my own fuel in situ when I need more rather than waiting a few years for a tanker to arrive.

Edited March 11, 2015 by AbacusWizard

[Valley]

When 1.0 comes I picture every moon in the system will become a mine, every orbital station a rest stop where my craft can top off, my Kerbals get to check their email for the interplanetary news and load up on snacks. Local landers, tugs, and SSTO craft will always be able to refuel and getting out of gravity wells, such as from Duna, will just be a question of fueling up, having your chutes repacked, and windows cleaned. The KSC will become a ship factory and Kerbin just a source of new crew members.

[syfyguy64]

It'd probably be "Right click to Refuel" over liquid on Eve.

[magnemoe]

The expensive part isn't the fuel; it's the launch assembly that's required to get the fuel off the ground and into orbit and up the gravity well away from Kerbin. Once I've launched a huge interplanetary spaceship, the biggest ongoing cost is sending up tankers to refuel it, because every tanker has to be launched--full!--from the space center back home. If I could keep re-using the same tanker, filling it up from (for example) Minmus, moving the fuel from where it's made to where it's needed becomes significantly cheaper.

It could save a lot of time, too. Suppose I'm planning on doing a lot of stuff in the Jool system. Instead of bringing all the fuel I'll ever need with me, my first mission could be setting up some mining and fuel production infrastructure. That way I can make my own fuel in situ when I need more rather than waiting a few years for a tanker to arrive.

Yes, it enables you to launch ships so they arrive in orbit empty, you are saving half the launch weight or more. You could solve this by launching spaceplanes with fuel but this is also lots of work and its far easier to scale up an tanker going from Minmus to LKO than an spaceplane.

The other great saving is if you need tons of fuel at the target, an Jool system mission is the most obvious here however if you jump around a lot doing science contracts this make sense everywhere.

[Acet]

My experience with the Karbonite and Extraplanetary Launchpads mods is that after you've sunk the credits to setup a mining, fuel production and building infrastructure in the surface of Minmus, you can actually do most contracts at a cost of 0 credits.

Even with just Karbonite, setting up a fuel production base at Minmus and a fuel transfer shuttle to Kerbin low orbit means that you can launch huge interplanetary ships from Kerbin surface with almost no fuel in them and just refuel them in low orbit. Given how for every extra ton of payload to low orbit you need almost 10 extra tons of launcher, being able to lauch them without fuel is a huge difference in costs. Furthermore since a return from Minmus surface to Kerbin low-orbit is less than 600dV with aerobreaking and tiny amounts of thrust give huge TWR in Minmus, huge fuel loads can be brought from Minmus on top of a ridiculously small engine with little loss of fuel. This probably makes no different in satellite missions but is huge for station, base and long range exploration missions.

[Wahgineer]

Right, but I think that wherever you put it, it would be more efficient to refine it on the ground and lift the resulting fuel into orbit instead of refining it in orbit.

I could be wrong, though, as I didn't spend much time with Karbonite. Kethane wasn't like this, but Karbonite is more realistic (you can't get 100 kg of gasoline from 50 kg of oil).

That is actually why there are karbonite powered engines: to more efficiently get it off of the ground.

I'm actually hoping that the resource powered engines from karbonite will make it into the game (those karbonite jet engines will be useful for Eve return missions).