Asteroid Mining

[juanml82]

Yeah, that's two large Kerbodyne tanks. That's a class C right?

[Caelib]

uh, what? That is like one jool mission.

If you're being efficient with small, uncrewed spacecraft, it's all you ever need. Using nuclear engines and producing all liquid fuel, this asteroid can supply dozens of spacecraft.

[Radam]

How much dV do you need to put an asteroid in a stable orbit around kerbin? As afaik ore is refined to fuel in 1 to 1 mass ratio.

[Aerindel]

If you're being efficient with small, uncrewed spacecraft, it's all you ever need

If all you want to do is fly small unscrewed craft then who cares? Why mine at all? The point of mining is to make large complex multi-crew and multi craft vessels possible.

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How much dV do you need to put an asteroid in a stable orbit around kerbin? As afaik ore is refined to fuel in 1 to 1 mass ratio

A lot. I put a class E into a Kerbin orbit and it used up all the resources of the asteroid and didn't even leave enough fuel to return my ship to Kerbin.

[juanml82]

I've just used Hyperdit to rv with a class E in solar orbit. It has some 2100 tons of ore, enough to refuel almost 30 kerbodyne large tanks. But with six nukes, it requires two large MK3 liquid fuel tanks to move it to an intercept with Kerbin from solar orbit (I think, I set the maneuver node with MJ, which set up a 350 dv node, but the dV keeps increasing) and a 46 minutes burn.

[Caelib]

If all you want to do is fly small unscrewed craft then who cares? Why mine at all? The point of mining is to make large complex multi-crew and multi craft vessels possible.

That's not "the point" ... the purpose is to enable players to use it in multiple, creative ways.

[SkyRender]

Size matters with asteroids more than ever. They always have about 85% of their mass as ore, so a class E will have about 1500 to 2000 tons of the stuff. Quite a difference over a low-end class C, obviously!

[Aerindel]

That's not "the point" ... the purpose is to enable players to use it in multiple, creative ways.

Fair enough, but one of those ways should be as a resource to fuel large complicated missions.

[KerikBalm]

Anything over 90% makes an asteroid a better fuel tank than the best fuel tank you can get in the game...

At least on a sufficiently large asteroid where the mass of the ISRU equipment doesn't upset the mass ratio.

I will certainly be looking to go out and nudge a few into aerocapture trajectories...

It should easily be possible to use them to supply LKO fuel depots...

And then I can deorbit them when they are exhausted... fun

[Drethon]

Anything over 90% makes an asteroid a better fuel tank than the best fuel tank you can get in the game...

At least on a sufficiently large asteroid where the mass of the ISRU equipment doesn't upset the mass ratio.

I will certainly be looking to go out and nudge a few into aerocapture trajectories...

It should easily be possible to use them to supply LKO fuel depots...

And then I can deorbit them when they are exhausted... fun

Hmm, asteroid fuel tanks and ships...

[Caelib]

Fair enough, but one of those ways should be as a resource to fuel large complicated missions.

Indeed! I've actually got a large class C parked in an equatorial orbit between Kerbin and the Mun that I use as a refueling station between missions.

[rhadamant]

I've found that my Minmus Mining Base + Minmus Orbital Refueling Station is a lot more useful than docking with an asteroid. Knowing I've got infinite fuel rather than something very limited enables me to do difficult missions like ...a round trip to Eve.

[Aerindel]

Hmm, asteroid fuel tanks and ships...

As a big sci-fan I was really hoping that this would turn out to be doable in KSP as its a classice sci-fi trope, I had dreams of building a massive colony ship out of a asteroid with engines and hab modules mounted all over it and mine all my fuel from it as I went..but the reality is that fuel payoff is so low asteroids are useless.

Now...if you could mine them for metals and construct ship parts on one that could be interesting.

[Pixel of Life]

It's probably easier to just build fuel stations around all of the low-gravity moons (Gilly, Mun, Minmus, Ike, Vall Bop, Pol), fly to the surface in a drill ship to collect a large amount of ore and then take it to the station for refining. Asteroids are useless - I flew out to a class C 'roid in hopes of bringing it to Kerbin and using it as an orbital fuel station but used up all the ore on the trip back.

[timsfitz]

Asteroid mining base may still be viable around Dres because there are multiple asteroids to mine. As one is exhausted, the base can go to another. I haven't unlocked asteroid tracking yet. Do the potatoroids continuously spawn there or are there only a few?

[Aerindel]

Asteroid mining base may still be viable around Dres because there are multiple asteroids to mine. As one is exhausted, the base can go to another. I haven't unlocked asteroid tracking yet. Do the potatoroids continuously spawn there or are there only a few?

I don't know if the respawn but they are all so far apart in both space and velocity that asteroid hopping is hardly any easier than just going to one.

It's probably easier to just build fuel stations around all of the low-gravity moons (Gilly, Mun, Minmus, Ike, Vall Bop, Pol), fly to the surface in a drill ship to collect a large amount of ore and then take it to the station for refining. Asteroids are useless - I flew out to a class C 'roid in hopes of bringing it to Kerbin and using it as an orbital fuel station but used up all the ore on the trip back

It is. My entire base of operations in my last game was centered around Gilly for inner system work and Pol for Jool missons, but you can't move those, which would be a pretty fun thing to do. I'd love to have a near infinite source of fuel in Kerbin orbit, even if it took a ton of work to get it there.

[Arsonik]

Without reading past the first page of replies, this is my opinion. I see fuel refining`s usefulness being limited to playing on Career mode. In particular hard mode careers. Where you might find some cost reductions on on trips beyond Kerbin orbit. If you have several missions planned to bodies outside of Kerbin, suddenly you have the potential to save HUGE money on fuel by sending upper stage payloads empty on fuel and filling them in LKO or at a Minmus refueling station.

[Laie]

suddenly you have the potential to save HUGE money on fuel

In principle you can save even more on tanks: you only need to start with enough fuel for a one-way trip. Even your landers! This would be most pronounced on Tylo, of course, but in that case I'm afraid that the low yield of solar panels will make it utterly impractical.

Still, being able to launch an empty vessel from Kerbin should save you tremendous amount of money. Not only fuel, but whole rocket stages. I've been doing that pre-1.0, using a huge spaceplane tanker for fuel trips. However, docking a 200-part plane with a 400-part Jool-5 mission wasn't exactly funny. ISRU will make this quite a bit easier on my nerves, I guess.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Laie

[timsfitz]

Looking forward to a nice big tylo Lander that refuels and leaves the mining equipment behind.

[spaceBrezel]

Haven't paid much attention to asteroids in 0.9 but i captured a class D (90% 200t~) today and have to say they are totally worth it.

Refuelled 100% of my capture mission and there is still like 150t left of resources.

Finally a reason to capture those rocks!

Some pics:

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Will enslave more rocks soon.

[Aerindel]

I see fuel refining`s usefulness being limited to playing on Career mode.

Not at all, I don't even play career mode as its just a grind with no actual reward. If it had a story mode or something it would be fun but as it is the challenges that I come up with for myself are for more interesting. I always start off in science mode as it gives you something to do that rewards you with points (even if they become useless after a few hours) but your not stuck flying missions you don't want to fly just to make some money.

I find mining massively useful as it allows you to have non disposable ships that you can fly many missions with and become expert at, and its much more fun to fly a medium sized ship that you can refuel at your destination than to always be launching massive Goliath's that must carry all the fuel for the trip back, or tiny little probes that hardly need any fuel.

I just wish we had some bigger asteroids, or places with denser asteroids all traveling within a few thousand Kms and a hundred M/s of each other.

[panzer1b]

I just wish we had some bigger asteroids, or places with denser asteroids all traveling within a few thousand Kms and a hundred M/s of each other.

im so for that, as in actual dense asteroid belt would be amazing.

ive actually tried to make such a thing around minmus though, the idea was to bring over 100 roids into orbit, for recreation of sci-fi asteriod dogfight scenes, but the sheer number youd need is just crazy high. might try to make a roid field around gilly as its VERY small and very low gravity, although i think id need Hedit for that one as actually pulling THAT many roids to gilly would be annoying.

As for teh mining, ive never found roids to make all that much sense, as outside of dres where you get them spawning in actual orbit nicely, it takes way too much dV to actually intercept them, so you are better off mining on a planet or instead bringing a fuel barge where its needed. Really the major useage ive found for the roids is to make bases on them, nothing is cooler looking then a tylium refinery replica on a class E.

[KerbMav]

1.0 might have been the opportunity to add more than one minable resource for the nuke-engines and RTGs - stuff only found on Eve (hehehe), Moho and asteroids.

[magnemoe]

Without reading past the first page of replies, this is my opinion. I see fuel refining`s usefulness being limited to playing on Career mode. In particular hard mode careers. Where you might find some cost reductions on on trips beyond Kerbin orbit. If you have several missions planned to bodies outside of Kerbin, suddenly you have the potential to save HUGE money on fuel by sending upper stage payloads empty on fuel and filling them in LKO or at a Minmus refueling station.

Mining require that your operation is above some scale, if you only do small probes its pointless.

if you do regular Mun landings an refueling stop makes sense.

If you regularly launch missions with 10 ton payload to other planets Minmus mining and LKO fuel depots makes sense.

Think its save weight doing Jool 5, it will save weight doing biome jumping.

if you play sandbox with giant motherships it makes sense, if you play career and send kerbals to Eeloo in an chair to plant the flag it does not.

[Decent Weasel]

It almost sounds like the benefit of mining asteroids is not to refuel your tanks, but to throw away mass so the asteroids aren't as difficult to push.

I always had a hard time docking, so rather than building orbital refueling stations, I'd just take the whole ship down and land on the flats. A lot of worlds, landing is an impractical dV load, but it wasn't too bad for Minmus / Gilly / Bop / Pol.

I like the idea of a reusable ship, but the problem I keep running into is aerodynamic heating - I'm not sure a trip to e.g. Jool would survive aerocapture without ablative shielding, and braking via retrograde burns seems ludicrously inefficient.

Maybe capture an asteroid and hold it in front as a shield?