Is mining ore worth it?

[jdsutton]

I haven't played in quite a while and the whole mining system is new to me. It seems like way more effort than it's worth though.

Do you bother with mining? What does your mining setup look like?

[Streetwind]

Mining ore to save money is not worth it.

However, for some missions it takes less mass and vessel size to haul a drill and refinery than it would take to haul the fuel required to complete the mission. Also, redirecting asteroids is made a lot easier because mining the asteroid not only gives you fuel, but also makes the asteroid lighter (meaning you need less time and fuel to redirect it).

[Wemb]

Instead of trying to launch huge ships from Kerbin? The ease of landing and returning big orange tanks from Minmus? Absolutely.

Wemb

[Claw]

Also, it depends a lot on what you mean by "worth it." With such an open ended game, a lot of the content in this game is done simply because you want to, or because it's there. So it would be important to know what the goals are, in order to say if it's worth it.

I did a boat/rover circumnavigation of Kerbin not to long ago. It took around three Kerbal weeks to refuel itself, in which time I could have easily landed a fuel depot. But sime time wasn't a factor, it was easier to just warp forward. So it really depends a lot on what you are planning, and (more importantly) what you enjoy doing.

Cheers,

-Claw

[Fearless Son]

In general, it is probably not worth the extra mass to take mining equipment with you compared to just taking along more fuel. However, there are still reasons why it is valuable. Setting up refueling stations out in the solar system can make future missions a bit easier to manage because you can stop vessels at them to top off their tanks. This extends their potential mission range and increases your margin of error so you are less likely to leave something stranded and out of fuel.

I stress that the practicality of this is something greater with stationary facilities than it is with carrying all the equipment on mobile missions. You can keep pulling ore and cracking it while other missions are going on, or in transit, so you do not have to keep fast forwarding time while waiting to fuel up. Have a surface base that extracts ore, and an orbital facility that holds the fuel, plus a tender to transfer from one to the other. You just have to remember to take control every once in a while to do the exchange. If you are going to do a crewed mission, send these things ahead as probes. By the time your crewed mission gets there, it will be ready to top off and can return on a full tank.

[KerikBalm]

In general, it is probably not worth the extra mass to take mining equipment with you compared to just taking along more fuel.

A complete mining addition to your craft can come in at under 5 tons... about as much as an FL-T800 tank.

It very quickly becomes worth it in credits in game, and mass efficiency.

As far as my time... well... its easier to mine on the Mun, than to send more fuel to munar fuel depots.

Even more so for Duna/Ike/Jool system... and so on.

Unlimited, indefinite operations around a celestial body... that is worth it to me

They key is to do other stuff while the miners work in the background

[Phil deCube]

I think it's worth it. This is one iteration of my Minmus Mining Base.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Phil deCube

[Edax]

I haven't played in quite a while and the whole mining system is new to me. It seems like way more effort than it's worth though.

Do you bother with mining? What does your mining setup look like?

When your around Duna, it's far easier to get gas in bulk at Ike then hauling a tanker in from Kerbin. Same goes with any other planet, it's easier to fill large tanks of gas close to the source. It'd take way more effect to launch multiple tankers from Kerbin's surface.

[Geschosskopf]

I haven't played in quite a while and the whole mining system is new to me. It seems like way more effort than it's worth though.

Do you bother with mining? What does your mining setup look like?

As with Kethane and Karbonite before it, there is no justification whatsoever in setting up a complex Ore refueling system within Kerbin's SOI. You spend more money setting it up than you'll ever recoup from using it, and using it entails needless delays and complications in doing whatever you want to the fuel for (which is why you'll never use it enough to pay it off). Within Kerbin's SOI, it's far, far, far easier, cheaper, and less time-consuming just to launch with whatever fuel you need, or send fuel out to Mun or Minmus from Kerbin.

Where Ore (and Kethane and Karbonite) comes to the fore is at other planets. And then only if you're into building large, permanent colonies there, and plan to spend most of your playing time messing with stuff in those colonies. If you're just going to another planet for flags and footprints, then don't bother setting anything up there. Your 1 there-and-back ship might be able to make its own fuel, but the mass of the equipment largely negates any savings on fuel mass for a 1-time thing. But if you have a continuing and fairly high level of local fuel consumption (such as going forth and back among the moons of Jool and flying a lot of planes on Laythe), then being to make your own fuel out there is pretty much essential and at lot less of a worry than having to continuously send tankers out there.

[LordCorwin]

Mining ore to save money is not worth it.

However, for some missions it takes less mass and vessel size to haul a drill and refinery than it would take to haul the fuel required to complete the mission. Also, redirecting asteroids is made a lot easier because mining the asteroid not only gives you fuel, but also makes the asteroid lighter (meaning you need less time and fuel to redirect it).

arrghhh.... I could have thought about that when I moved one D asteroid from Kerbin to Ike. It was a total pain!

[Edax]

As with Kethane and Karbonite before it, there is no justification whatsoever in setting up a complex Ore refueling system within Kerbin's SOI. You spend more money setting it up than you'll ever recoup from using it, and using it entails needless delays and complications in doing whatever you want to the fuel for (which is why you'll never use it enough to pay it off). Within Kerbin's SOI, it's far, far, far easier, cheaper, and less time-consuming just to launch with whatever fuel you need, or send fuel out to Mun or Minmus from Kerbin.

Where Ore (and Kethane and Karbonite) comes to the fore is at other planets. And then only if you're into building large, permanent colonies there, and plan to spend most of your playing time messing with stuff in those colonies. If you're just going to another planet for flags and footprints, then don't bother setting anything up there. Your 1 there-and-back ship might be able to make its own fuel, but the mass of the equipment largely negates any savings on fuel mass for a 1-time thing. But if you have a continuing and fairly high level of local fuel consumption (such as going forth and back among the moons of Jool and flying a lot of planes on Laythe), then being to make your own fuel out there is pretty much essential and at lot less of a worry than having to continuously send tankers out there.

I actually found mining on Minmus and Mun to be VERY profitable. Since my miner, refinery, refueling station are all just a single ship, I get paid for orbiting, (space station contract), landing (base contract), mining (extracting ore contract), and lastly getting paid bring the ore to Kerbin orbit (which I already do cause ore tanks are more efficient then fuel tanks). Easy money. And it only costs 400,000 funds to lug the thing up into orbit to begin with.

[Alshain]

I haven't played in quite a while and the whole mining system is new to me. It seems like way more effort than it's worth though.

Do you bother with mining? What does your mining setup look like?

Nope.

[Reactordrone]

I don't generally bother unless there's a contract that specifies placing ISRU infrastructure around the place, I can see the utility though. I currently have a base on Minmus that could literally explore every part of that moon and refuel itself without ever needing resources from Kerbin.

[Jett_Quasar]

Ore mining has changed the game for me. I build ships with an ISRU and drills on-board and they have effectively infinite range. I can basically complete all kinds of contracts with zero cost. I put together a quick video to show how I mad around 1.5 Million kerbucks with two contracts for Duna with effectively zero cost.

JR

[KerikBalm]

If you're just going to another planet for flags and footprints, then don't bother setting anything up there. Your 1 there-and-back ship might be able to make its own fuel, but the mass of the equipment largely negates any savings on fuel mass for a 1-time thing.

Because the mass of a FL-T800 tank (ie, refinery+dril+ore tank) is sooo much....

IMO, ISRU is too easy, they need to make the drills and refinery more massive.

[Phil deCube]

The next step from the mining base I posted a picture of before is this fuel station (with a fuel ferry from Minmus docked with it), 200 km above Minmus, where nuclear powered vessels refuel before heading off to other planets.

[Sharpy]

In general, it is probably not worth the extra mass to take mining equipment with you compared to just taking along more fuel.

Excuse me?

ISRU: 4.3t

Large holding tank (empty) 2t.

2 drills 2x 2.5t = 5t (you need only one, but it's hard to attach it in line with center of mass)

2 gigantors 2x0.3t = 0.6t

Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tank (empty) 4t.

15.9t total.

Versus:

Rockomax X200-32 fuel tank (full) 18t.

You can get the whole mining operation with an orange tank in less mass than half the Orange Tank.

ISRU despite its size and appearance is ridiculously light.

------------------------

Orbital refuelling totally shifts the game economy. Instead of hauling full transfer stages on top of ultra-heavy lifters, you haul light recoverable stage with launch stage engines on vestigal tanks strapped under the transfer stage, using the transfer stage's fuel. You land in LKO almost empty, then go refuel, stage the launch engines and deorbit them (using the refilled "vestigal" tanks), then send your ship away with full transfer stage tanks.

Of course the orbital refuelling station itself is sent to the orbit almost empty (actually, sent full, arrives empty!) and you either ferry fuel from Minmus (all the operations except the initial trip there fuelled with newly manufactured fuel), or you build your refuelling station on a large asteroid. Which you bring by a tug that mines its own fuel from the asteroid it pulls (using up between 30 and 60% of said asteroid, depending on its trajectory).

In short:

Compare the wet to dry mass of anything you send out minus its launch stage. Then adjust size of your launch stage to launch the dry mass instead of the wet mass, then adjust it again for not hauling its own huge tanks but draining the transfer stage instead.

You can get the payloads into orbit in half the launch price and with full recovery of the launch stage.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Sharpy

[KerikBalm]

Large holding tank (empty) 2t.

2 drills 2x 2.5t = 5t (you need only one, but it's hard to attach it in line with center of mass)

2 gigantors 2x0.3t = 0.6t

Rockomax Jumbo-64 fuel tank (empty) 4t.

I don't think you really even need to count the holding tank and the rockomax...

#1) When you arrive, you should have some emptied tanks to fill up, that you'd have anyway.

There is rarely a need to send an extra empty tank.

This is my ISRU+ orbital depot setup for Mun:

https://scontent-mxp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/11845156_10103784177439903_8345922888044707207_o.jpg

The fuel depot on the right is just the re-filled rocket that I used to get the science lab there (part way through, I decided I wanted a bigger depot, and didn't stage off the skipper stage, but transfered fuel to it to complete the burn, reducing the fuel stores for the depot that I was using before unlocking ISRU).

The Fuel tanker on the left is just the same fuel tanks that I used to send it to Mun and land it (granted, it had more fuel than it needed for that... but)

#2) You don't need a large holding tank, a single small one is sufficient. its quite rare that you can mine faster than you can process (but sometimes while time warping there's a bit of weirdness, and a buffer can save time).... but if you've got a refinery attached, an ore tank is as good as a fuel tank (almost for LFO, better for LF tanks except the mk1 tanks). Its also a source of cheap fuel.

So it goes with point 1... you just use empty tank space.

Launch with full fuel tanks, and a full ore tank.

Go to your destination, on the way, refine the ore into fuel for capture burns, landing, etc.

Now you've got a lot of empty tank space that you'd have any way if you weren't mining.

All you needed to take extra was the ISRU unit... 4.25 tons, 1 drills... the drills mass 0.75 tons... I don't know why the wiki summary says 2.5 tons (click on it, and then the page for just the drill shows 0.75)... and yea, a pair of gigantors is nice... but due to the similarity in weight, you can have a gigantor on one side, and a drill opposite it... only a 0.45 ton imbalance... which you can easily make up for with a little use of the offset or rotate tools... or mount the gigantor farther out, like on a radially attached 1.25 m part...

4.25+0.75+.3.... if you really want, you can count the extra mass of using an ore tank which is less mass efficient than a LFO tank...

I'll give you 5.5 tons... that is far less than 15 tons

[Sharpy]

I don't think you really even need to count the holding tank and the rockomax...

Yep, your summary is accurate. Just a note you need an ore tank, any. The process won't work without one, the drill can't feed ore directly to ISRU.

[Geschosskopf]

I actually found mining on Minmus and Mun to be VERY profitable. Since my miner, refinery, refueling station are all just a single ship, I get paid for orbiting, (space station contract), landing (base contract), mining (extracting ore contract), and lastly getting paid bring the ore to Kerbin orbit (which I already do cause ore tanks are more efficient then fuel tanks). Easy money. And it only costs 400,000 funds to lug the thing up into orbit to begin with.

You can't depend on even getting these contracts at all, let alone having them all available at once. So assume you have zero contracts for this. Now you have to build the system out of your own pocket, then take the time to put it to use. Repeatedly, until it pays for itself. That's playing time you could be using actually doing stuff out in the boonies.

Orbital refuelling totally shifts the game economy. Instead of hauling full transfer stages on top of ultra-heavy lifters, you haul light recoverable stage with launch stage engines on vestigal tanks strapped under the transfer stage, using the transfer stage's fuel. You land in LKO almost empty, then go refuel, stage the launch engines and deorbit them (using the refilled "vestigal" tanks), then send your ship away with full transfer stage tanks.

It depends on how you value things. One key ingredient in the game economy, as mentioned to Edax above, is your own personal time as a player. Assuming you have a life, your opportunities to play the game and the amount of time per session are limited. If you want to get the most exploration and colonization you can do in your limited amount of playing time, then you don't want to spend a significant amount of it mucking about in Kerbin's SOI.

Using your system, you're condemned to frequent trips between Kerbin and your refueling base with landings, take-offs, rendezvous, and dockings in between. Plus you are even landing recoverable boosters. To me, this is all endless, repetitive, grindy toil and trouble, consuming vast amounts of player time. And while doing all this, you make zero forward progress with the actual mission you created this system to support. And if the actual mission involves a multi-ship interplanetary flotilla, you have to go through all this repeatedly for each ship, and the flotilla will likely never leave Kerbin. IOW, instead of the game being about the mission, it's now about a mere support function.

So yes, you're right if you only consider KSP money. But if you value your time at all, a refueling system within Kerbin's SOI has an astronomical pricetag. Especially once you have multiple interplanetary flotillas both en route and at their destinations already, and are having to keep all those plates spinning at once via KAC. There simply isn't time left to do any of this refueling drudgery at Kerbin. Besides, by that point in the game, you should already be extremely wealthy so aren't concerned at all that a launch might cost $200,000 more than if you refueled it in LKO. You only care about getting up and away to the stars.

Now, in the old games of the X Universe, you could automate all the ships and stations you owned by hiring NPC crews to do all the mundane, repetitive tasks. This let you personally go do all the fun stuff like hunting pirates and advancing the plot while enjoying the benefits of a whole support system. If KSP ever gets such automation, then I'd be the 1st to set up just what you have going here. But as long as I have to do it all hands-on, no friggin' way .

[Sharpy]

Personally, I'm very reluctant to use the top time warp. So while waiting for transfer windows, I'm doing other stuff. Besides, constructing such an infrastructure is an adventure by itself.

Like that time I delivered four brand new fuel trucks to Minmus, but I miscalculated fuel for the transfer stage and landed dry 30km away from the rig, had to transport them on wheels and solar power, had the engineer from the rig take a speeder to fix broken wheels, and so on. That was Science mode.

And my past week in Career mode, hauling a Class E into LKO? That was worthy of a saga! Starting with my fight against the Mun, engine plantation, ending with deorbiting the tug and bringing the final base/rig into orbit.

[Geschosskopf]

Personally, I'm very reluctant to use the top time warp. So while waiting for transfer windows, I'm doing other stuff. Besides, constructing such an infrastructure is an adventure by itself.

Top-end time warp is harmless these days, and waiting for transfer windows in orbit consumes life support supplies if you do that.

Besides, I always have something else to do. I typically have 30-50 ships in flight at any one time, at nearly every body in the game. Granted, about half of them are communications satellites which, once in place, can mostly be ignored, but even then there's always something needing my attention. Besides, I do set up big, involved, efficient refueling systems.... at other planets. I actually need those for my colonies to function, and if I have to devote a lot of time to such repetitive drudgery, I'd much rather do it someplace other than Kerbin, so it's more exciting .

Now, after having thought about it some, there IS a cheap, non-grindy, short-time-needing way to refuel in LKO. Use Roverdude's UKS mod. This has a part called a Logistics Hub, the entire purpose of which is to eliminate the drudgery of moving resources around between different ships, stations, and bases. It basically magics resources from 1 place to another via "cargo drones" (that don't actually appear in the game) which consume fuel and take time to travel. So what you do is build a mining/refining/fuel-storing base on Kerbin about 3km from KSC so not in physics range, and include one of these Logistics Hubs on it. Then have it teleport the fuel up to your ship in LKO. No need to build a base on Minmus or travel to/from it, no need for rendezvous and dockings, and less game-time spent on refueling than doing it manually. Plus all the fuel both transferred to your ship and consumed in the process is still free.

[jackboy900]

Now, in the old games of the X Universe, you could automate all the ships and stations you owned by hiring NPC crews to do all the mundane, repetitive tasks. This let you personally go do all the fun stuff like hunting pirates and advancing the plot while enjoying the benefits of a whole support system. If KSP ever gets such automation, then I'd be the 1st to set up just what you have going here. But as long as I have to do it all hands-on, no friggin' way .

MJ would fit this bill very well.

[Edax]

You can't depend on even getting these contracts at all, let alone having them all available at once. So assume you have zero contracts for this. Now you have to build the system out of your own pocket, then take the time to put it to use. Repeatedly, until it pays for itself. That's playing time you could be using actually doing stuff out in the boonies.

It depends on how you value things. One key ingredient in the game economy, as mentioned to Edax above, is your own personal time as a player. Assuming you have a life, your opportunities to play the game and the amount of time per session are limited. If you want to get the most exploration and colonization you can do in your limited amount of playing time, then you don't want to spend a significant amount of it mucking about in Kerbin's SOI.

Using your system, you're condemned to frequent trips between Kerbin and your refueling base with landings, take-offs, rendezvous, and dockings in between. Plus you are even landing recoverable boosters. To me, this is all endless, repetitive, grindy toil and trouble, consuming vast amounts of player time. And while doing all this, you make zero forward progress with the actual mission you created this system to support. And if the actual mission involves a multi-ship interplanetary flotilla, you have to go through all this repeatedly for each ship, and the flotilla will likely never leave Kerbin. IOW, instead of the game being about the mission, it's now about a mere support function.

So yes, you're right if you only consider KSP money. But if you value your time at all, a refueling system within Kerbin's SOI has an astronomical pricetag. Especially once you have multiple interplanetary flotillas both en route and at their destinations already, and are having to keep all those plates spinning at once via KAC. There simply isn't time left to do any of this refueling drudgery at Kerbin. Besides, by that point in the game, you should already be extremely wealthy so aren't concerned at all that a launch might cost $200,000 more than if you refueled it in LKO. You only care about getting up and away to the stars.

Now, in the old games of the X Universe, you could automate all the ships and stations you owned by hiring NPC crews to do all the mundane, repetitive tasks. This let you personally go do all the fun stuff like hunting pirates and advancing the plot while enjoying the benefits of a whole support system. If KSP ever gets such automation, then I'd be the 1st to set up just what you have going here. But as long as I have to do it all hands-on, no friggin' way .

Space Station/ Surface Base contracts for Kerbin's moons are very common. The line-of-logic "can't depend on even getting these contracts" is a little flimsy, cause by that logic, just entering space is an expensive proposition with the potential of no returns. When it comes to the resource of playtime, mining also shortens time. Before mining, I had to launch 5 rocket tankers to fuel up my Duna mission, which took me a while to do (cause I had to land the damn things as close to KSC as possible since I need to squeeze every last coin for the Duna mission). Cause of my fleet of miners/refineries/refueling stations loaded with fuel around Kerbin, my SSTO fleet is now capable of interplanetary missions on the cheap. The spacestation miners themselves all paid for themselves by contracts, which only need to complete 2 out of a possible 4 (and the ectracting ore and shipping ore contacts are repeatable, easy money) and since mining can be done while doing something else, it's a big timesaver, and makes going to planets quicker and cheaper. (Though I confess that shipping fuel from Minmus to Kerbin orbit can be a little time consuming)

Edited August 13, 2015 by Edax

[ajburges]

The nice thing about keeping refueling stations in each major SoI is it makes it feasible to run irresponsibly inefficient (but fast) transfers.

Your crew ferries and contract modules can really optimize for arrival time over dV cost. Even if you start mining the fill-up after the craft's departure burn, a full thank will be ready when it arrives and you can immediately return said craft to Kerbin! It also frees up launch windows for more massive projects like stations and the mining system itself.

Building a refinery system on Minmus/Mun may be a wash financially, but it makes a good proving ground to test your ideas. Every major SoI has a low mass airless planetoid to mine on.

Beyond building the obvious gas stations, mining allows for some fun landers. Check out Kuzzter's work. Especially "Duna Ore Bust." Rocket planes on Duna can actually make surveys novel for a time.