How efficient is your Minmus mining operation? Share your pics

[Just Jim]

My Super-Heavy Ore Grinder, or SHOG for short:

This beast can drill and hold 12,000 units of ore on Minmus, deliver almost 4000 units to my space station in low Kerbin orbit while keeping itself refueled all the way there and back to land on Minmus and do it all over again. As big as she is, she translates well docking, and lands quite smoothly. The nicest part landing is I can use the poodle engines to keep her coming down at a steady rate, and toggle the rhino engine on and off to act as a sort of landing brake. I love this ship!

[Whackjob]

I'm somewhat inclined to build one. Not sure how the mechanics work. I've been gone a while. Are fuel lines required for the refinery on board?

[AbacusWizard]

Are fuel lines required for the refinery on board?

Shouldn't be. As far as I can tell, drills will create ore in any ore container on the same ship, and refineries will convert ore from any ore container on the same ship into fuel in any fuel tank on the same ship.

The main choice you'll be making is how to split up the infrastructure:

• lander with drills mining ore and taking it up to orbital refinery?

• surface mine with drills, refinery in orbit, and tanker to carry ore from one to the other?

• surface outpost with drills and refinery, pumping fuel directly into tanker which takes it up to orbit?

• all-in-one supertanker that lands, mines ore, converts it to fuel, and returns to orbit?

So many choices! Keep in mind that ore and fuel weigh the same, at least for now.

[Homusubi]

I've started incorporating drills and ISRUs into all my interplanetary craft, resulting in a larger-than-average lander-type thing which is at least Duna-capable. Use 75% of the rocket to get into Kerbin orbit, then use the lander to get to Minmus, refuel, and go to Duna. Refuel at Duna (with loads of parachutes) if you want to get to Jool.

[sj176]

My Minmus mining operation. It's just my copy and paste surface base. Probably extremely inefficient, but I wouldn't know as I never actually use it for mining.

[Whackjob]

Maybe I'll find time to make an Arkingthaad style lander that's also a big ol' refinery.

[Frank_G]

Look who is here... I am really looking forward to that.

[Just Jim]

I'm somewhat inclined to build one. Not sure how the mechanics work. I've been gone a while. Are fuel lines required for the refinery on board?

No. While my ship has gas lines, I found they're not needed, and I'm removing them from the next version.

[Jens Lyn IV]

I've been toying with this in sandbox for some time now, and finally have an operational Minmus fuel factory.

Left to right: drill rig & refinery, scout rover, fuel truck, fuel ferry (background), staff hut (foreground), staff shuttle.

The centrepiece, a combined drill rig and refinery.

Please wipe your feet.

This truck transfers fuel from the refinery to the fuel ferry.

This autonomous ship ferries 5000 units of liquid fuel and 600 units of monopropellant to LKO and returns to Minmus.

Fuel truck docked to refinery.

Interplanetary nuclear thermal rocket, the intended consumer of the fuel produced at Minmus.

The craft required to launch same fuel from Kerbin.

Edited August 2, 2015 by Jens Lyn IV

[Kamuchi]

1.0.2: first small mining outpost and then the MCV outpost deployment kit

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[Whackjob]

A rough prototype.

Launch with some booster.

Trying for orbit.

Made it. Can't really go anywhere else, but I made it. Now I can mess around a bit.

Edited August 1, 2015 by Whackjob

[mdkendall]

Here are some pics of my Minmus mining operation. It's located on the Great Flats, in the narrows near the equator which makes it handy for getting to and from equatorial orbit.

Maxie Kerman and Kendon Kerman are crewing the command pod with a good view out over operations. The ISRU refinery is below them, with ore storage below that. A parking rail with space for eight tankers extends south, with the actual mining rig attached to the end. A general purpose tug is docked to it.

There are four identical tankers at the base right now, all flown up here from Kerbin and all now full. They are capable of undocking and delivering almost all their load to low Minmus orbit, or about two thirds of it to low Kerbin orbit, allowing enough to get back to Minmus.

Here's the view from the other side, showing four more parking spots.

And here's the view at night.

Edited August 6, 2015 by mdkendall
typo

[Xannari Ferrows]

I'm probably the only person in the history of existence to not build a Minmus base. I designed this guy for preferable high gravity bodies, as a heavy duty tanker. Notice it has no solar cells.

This is Vall, by the way.

[Virtualgenius]

Minmus Base

[Falkenherz]

@virtualgenius: which mod parts are those?

Here is my operation, the Navitas, all in one:

Ore concentration is only 4.32%, each of the two drills mines 0.002159/second, amplified by a level 1 engineer to 0.019428ore/second, which is ~70 ore per hour per drill. The Lf+Ox conversion rate of the ISRU is faster than what both drills dig out. Thus, the operation will generate ~840 ore per Kerbal day, thereby refilling the vessel in roughly 8 days (if you let in mine during nighttime by not accessing its physics bubble).

Edited August 6, 2015 by Falkenherz

[Virtualgenius]

Bobcats HOME 3

KAS

Landing Legs from Alexustas Konquest thread

ERS Rover by Alexustas

Near Future electrical and construction parts

Storage Boxes are from KIS

Landing engines are an old model from Chris Adderly

B9 spotlights

[Bishop149]

Finished my Minmus mine yesterday. . . . . its a little different however, it's primary purpose is to mine water rather ore as a both a propellant and a reactant in KSPI-E's engines and refineries respectively, at full capacity it can yield about 6 tons of water per day running four extractors consuming 120MW of nuclear power and store over 200,000 units of water.

It can also mine some ore to be converted in the mono-propellant that fuels all my orbital tankers, I find this approach of keeping such craft fueled by something I don't use as a primary propellant elsewhere useful in not confusing what fuel goes where or mixing up deltaV calculations by assuming payload is fuel!

Whole operation (when full) weighs about 300 tons

Next step in refinery operations is to set up a Hydrazine factory in LKO, fueled by water from Minmus and Nitrogen from Kerbin's atmosphere.

Oh yeah and blue lights because water!

Edited August 6, 2015 by Bishop149

[Weywot8]

How you figure? . This has been hashed and rehashed for years by people contemplating first Kethane and then Karbonite. The questions/tutorials forum is full of such threads, and they all say the same thing. Do not bother with a refueling system within Kerbin's SOI. Ore is no different.

Glad everyone came with some proper rebuttals of this! Although to be fair...

I built the monster below before restarting in 1.03/4 and it worked out to be free with the proper base and ore/fuel contracts along with it's refueling station. Bonus contract - test Rhino in Munar orbit . The improved 'fuel spike' enroute to Minimus works (and lands!) better than the version on the Mun.

24 drills, one engineer, capable of relifting and getting to Minimus/Duna if I wanted to. Makes a crazy amount of LF-Ox so I don't bother until just before launching stuff to start it up. The Rhino thruster doubles up as a refueling station to assist draining the Mun and Minimus of science.

I prefer to send fuel from Minimus and ships with extra empty tanks to the Mun for refueling, assisted by MKS/OKS's Orbital Logistics part but docking/KIS-KAS works too. Then I fiddle about with maneuver nodes and a bit of timing to return the ship to Kerbin with the right inclination and do the interplanetary burn in-atmosphere at 60-65km:

• recover the 800m/s deltaV used to get to the Mun, now vectored to the right trajectory, also inclination change essentially "free"
  
• MOAR Oberth effect
  

This lets me send really heavy payloads out to distant places (and the really distant OPM planets) without worrying about 'optimal launch windows'. 100 days to Duna leaving 18 hours after launching NOW for cheaper vs 200 days to optimal window and 200 days optimal transit from Kerbin? No probs.

[AbacusWizard]

Here are some pics of my Minmus mining operation. It's located on the Great Flats, in the narrows near the equator which makes it handy for getting to and from equatorial orbit.

http://i.imgur.com/AMDY4vX.jpg

I love the modular design! The parking rail to accomodate multiple tankers is a great idea.

[ithinkiamaps]

I really like this setup!!! Question though: Can you switch to a completely different mission and this base will continue to mine? Or do you have to be switched to this mission (and use time warp) in order for it to mine?

[magnemoe]

How you figure? . This has been hashed and rehashed for years by people contemplating first Kethane and then Karbonite. The questions/tutorials forum is full of such threads, and they all say the same thing. Do not bother with a refueling system within Kerbin's SOI. Ore is no different.

It boils down to several things. First, there's the sheer time and hassle of it all compared to just launching what you need to start with. But on the fuel side, it's also cheaper to do that, too. This is because the heavier a ship, the more fuel it needs to generate a given amount of dV. Thus, moving large quantities of fuel (and thus a heavy ship) consumes more fuel than you save save by putting the remainder into another ship.

Consider a fuel depot in LKO supplied from Minmus. For this run, your tanker doesn't even need landing gear so is just tankage and engines. From LKO out to Minmus surface is 1300-1400m/s. This is done with no cargo so doens't need all that much fuel. Coming back from Minmus surface and rendezvousing in LKO with the fuel depot can takes anything from 500-1000m/s depending on how well you aerobrake (and more if you don't aerobrake), but this time the ferry is heavy with fuel so the amount of fuel consumed is actually rather greater than what it needed for the outward trip even with dV on the low end of that scale. Plus whatever mono the tanker uses during docking. On top of this, unless you're adept at launching straight to a rendezvous, whatever comes up from Kerbin will have to spend about 300m/s on top of its launch cost to rendezvous with the station (plus mono for docking) to use any of the fuel from Minmus. There is also the sunk cost of setting up the whole operation, which will require many uses to pay off. So the end result is, you consume more fuel and spend more money, plus take a lot more time, doing all this than just flying out from Kerbin.

There's also the question of what you'd use an LKO refueling station for anyway. Anything going interplanetary is cheaper to launch with enough fuel for the outward trip than it is to bother with refueling in LKO. Use the refining stuff at the destination so you don't need to pack fuel to come home with. And even with SSTOs that can barely make orbit to start with and need to refuel to do anything else, it's still cheaper to send the fuel up from Kerbin than bother with the whole Minmus-LKO tanker system.

The only way a refueling system in Kerbin is actually worth doing is if you luck into abundant ore next to KSC. That means you can build rockets with empty fuel tanks and fill them up for free on the launchpad prior to launch. Sure, you have to buy the rovers to do this but that will pay off finacially in a few launches, although it does cost time and effort on your part.

Strongly disagree here, 1400 m/s with 4 LV-N, then 3-500 m/s to get into orbit. I now have 3 of the larges MK3 tanks with fuel in LKO, this is enough to fill multiple ships.

Standard practice for interplanetary ships is to adjust them so they do the last 5-700 m/s of the 3300 m/s burn themselves and arive in LKO with just 2-300 m/s left.

As fuel is most of the weight I get away with an far smaller launcher who only has to do 2500-2700 m/s anyway.

Its far cheaper and also easier to launch 80 ton to LKO rather than 200, worse as the interplanetary ships are rarely very aerodynamic

More I often use an reusable LV-N tug for the first 1000 m/s. Now this tug would need to either be launched as part of the ship as an LV-N transfer stage or refueled from ground.

I have another miner on mun, its the old minmus miner this is only used for Mun opperations but let me jump anywhere on Mun.

Only benefit of not using LKO fuel depots is the extra steps. You have to do an mission to Minmus for every 2-3 large interplanetary ships and you have to dock in orbit.

benefit is smaller and easier to build launchers.

You are likely to want an small mining operation anyway like I have on Mun.

its often smart to take the base on Mun or Minmus contracts and do an test run with an new base for other planets, easy 200k funds and you test the base over time in space before landing on Eeloo

- - - Updated - - -

I really like this setup!!! Question though: Can you switch to a completely different mission and this base will continue to mine? Or do you have to be switched to this mission (and use time warp) in order for it to mine?

Base continues to mine, as an bonus it does not use power then not loaded.

Only difference is that it will first fill up the ore tanks then convert to fuel and oxidizer. This is not very important except that you might run low on power then you convert ore at maximum capacity and drill at the same time.

[Pthigrivi]

1.0.5 Mining up and running :)

Its as simple as I could make it. Everything is run on LF and Nervas. The mining rig loads up on the surface and transfers to an aerobraking tanker above Minmus. Now I can deliver all my modules empty to LKO via SSTO and fuel up there for free.

[imgur]F9xRo[/imgur]

[RoboRay]

It's efficient enough, but it's more about looking good!

[imgur]fanIU[/imgur]

This was 1.04, though... I guess I need a new one!

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

On 5/15/2015 at 4:54 PM, xtoro said:

Thanks! The real challenge was getting the vtol rover/lander into kerbin orbit to begin with lol, but I managed:

This is what's inside the fairing:

I have MechJeb installed, and I can fly manually but for the tedious stuff, I'll use it just because it gets repetitive. I do however do everything manually about a dozen times to perfect it before getting MJ to do things for me. I also use Davon Throttle Control for the VTOL because it balances out the engines thrust based on where the COG is automatically. I tried so many designs to get it to balance regardless of how full the tanks were and decided to go the high-tech NASA route

That looks like an awful big rocket... did you drain those Mk3 tanks?

[magnemoe]

Well here is my current Minmus base. 

From left, ore and other stuff storage combined with drill lots of drills to speed stuff up, main fuel storage and refining. 
An experimental greenhouse module, nuclear reactor with nuclear material refining and storage. Living quarters, part manufacturing, lab, greenhouse  and command center in the cross shaped module, utility rover in back and an rare material and ore tanker in front. 

Another shot with the ore tanker taking of. 

Moonshadow is the LEO hub of everything, greenhouse, lab, small part manufacturing, it can hold 50 kerbals. Core is 3.75m. 

Its the base of commerce and also hold science who is to be researched by other ships going out. 
its has one ore carrier and one passenger ship docked. 

Rare material transfer from Moonshadow to an heavy industrial lander, the lander take 160 ton of rare minerals back to Kerbin, this give me 1.2 million credit. 


Adding an drag plate on an passenger ship so it can do high speed aerobrakes. This is done by parts produced on Minmus, I assume the MK1 capsule if for an single kerbal to return to the surface. The drag plate was an major invention. 


However not without problems, this was an ore carrier with some RUD issues, the second with field modifications is still in service. 

Finaly an basic fuel carrier with the current drag plate design, mod 3 has some ore and rare material storage added. 


Relevant mods is KAS, KIS, Planetary bases, OSE_Workshop and Stockalike_Station_Parts_Expansion_Redux, 

LOL I necroed myself. 
Might want to do that more, probably an way to immortality, simply summon yourself after you are dead. 
More training is obviously needed 

Edited September 8, 2018 by magnemoe