Space Mining Profitability Challenge!

[Pds314]

Space Mining Profitability Challenge

The goal of this challenge is to mine resources from another world and sell them on Kerbin for a net profit/surplus that pays for the missions.

Rules:

1. No mining on Kerbin.
2. No pre-loading tanks with ore.
3. Keep track of how much your launches cost and the value of your recoveries so you can know if you're making a profit.
4. Don't deliberately kill or strand your Kerbals.

[Chel]

By no mining on Kerbin, would it be ok if I land the asteroid on the surface and mine it there? Or is that a breach of the rules

[Pds314]

3 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

By no mining on Kerbin, would it be ok if I land the asteroid on the surface and mine it there? Or is that a breach of the rules

Yeah that's fine.
You don't have to mine an asteroid though. Like, you can mine on the Mun or somewhere if you want.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Pds314

[Chel]

29 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Yeah that's fine.
You don't have to mine an asteroid though. Like, you can mine on the Mun or somewhere if you want.

Oh ok. I'll get some asteroids in orbit around Kerbin, and just send a mining shuttle up there and then land back at the KSC. Seems pretty easy. What's the reward for completing this challenge?

[Pds314]

Just now, The_Cat_In_Space said:

Oh ok. I'll get some asteroids in orbit around Kerbin, and just send a mining shuttle up there and then land back at the KSC. Seems pretty easy. What's the reward for completing this challenge?

Well, getting the asteroids in orbit around Kerbin is far from free lol.

[Pds314]

My plan so far involves an SSTO going back and forth from orbit to pick up shipments from the Mun. The problem is that going back and forth to orbit eats into the profitability.

My current plan is to send 100 tonnes of LFO up for every 100 tonnes of Monoprop down, then make a self-sustaining Mun colony and a tanker to take everything back and forth.

The idea is that if it can achieve this performance, 100 tonnes of Monoprop is 25000 units is worth $30000. 100 tonnes of LFO, meanwhile, is worth $9180. Thus, each trip nets about $20000.

The next big component of the mission for me is a Mun-LKO-Mun tug that can store 100 tonnes of monoprop and enough fuel to go back and forth and maneuver. This will need to land on the surface and takeoff fully-loaded, and it looks like it will have about 175 tonnes of fuel and mass in at just under 330 tonnes fully-loaded. The cost of the vehicle itself will be around $80000 in LKO with enough fuel brought from Kerbin to boost itself to the moon and land. Not sure what I'l do in terms of getting it to LKO in the first place. Probably external rocket engines and extra fuel.

Then of course I need a mining and processing facility on the Mun, preferably with internal tankage to store everything it mines and processes, which will need to be 175 tonnes of LFO and 100 tonnes of Monoprop. Still doing the math on that one. It appears I need multiple drills to simply keep up with the intermunar tug. In particular, it needs about 0.4 u/s to be ready for the tanker when it lands every 17 or so hours. The other concern is power usage. Low yield ores consume more power to mine than they give out in fuel cells, so if the drills are not on at least 3% or so ore concentration, they will not be able to run on fuel cell power.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Pds314

[oAsAo]

I might do this challenge someday. Have some ideas to guarantee that this gonna be profitable.

[vyznev]

If we're allowed to amortize costs over arbitrarily many launches, it seems to me that pretty much the optimal mission plan would be to have two vehicles: a Kerbin SSTO that hauls empty tanks to LKO, and a space mining vessel that flies out to Minmus (or wherever you prefer to do your mining), fills up its tanks, flies back to LKO, docks with the SSTO, fills its tanks, flies back to Minmus and repeats. Meanwhile, the SSTO lands with full tanks on Kerbin (preferably on the runway for maximum recovery value ) and is emptied and re-launched.

The advantage of this plan is that the mining vessel is effectively free: it only burns fuel it has mined for itself, and since it's indefinitely reusable, its initial launch cost can be split over arbitrarily many round trips. So the only running cost you're really paying is the fuel for the Kerbin SSTO vehicle -- and since you can refill its fuel tanks in orbit too, you'll get almost all of that back as well.

Of course, you could tweak this plan in various ways, e.g. leaving the mining gear permanently on Minmus and just having a Minmus-LKO shuttle transport its output to LKO. But this won't actually affect the long term cost per unit of returned fuel in any way.

[Laie]

3 hours ago, vyznev said:

If we're allowed to amortize costs over arbitrarily many launches, it seems to me that pretty much the optimal mission plan would be to have two vehicles: a Kerbin SSTO that hauls empty tanks to LKO, and a space mining vessel that flies out to Minmus (or wherever you prefer to do your mining), fills up its tanks, flies back to LKO, docks with the SSTO, fills its tanks, flies back to Minmus and repeats. Meanwhile, the SSTO lands with full tanks on Kerbin (preferably on the runway for maximum recovery value ) and is emptied and re-launched.

Pretty close. Arguably it would be even better if you left the mining equipment on Minmus to reduce dry mass for transfers, but that adds complications. Ultimately, X amount of free stuff arrives in LKO and everything you need to get it there is a one-time fee. Overall profitability is then determined by the launch cost of the shuttle.

And yes, you very much want to land on the runway.

[MaverickSawyer]

Does this have to be stock, or can I use Community Resource Pack? Because there are some seriously expensive resources there.

 

Also, some mods allow you to collect Xenon. Are those allowed if CRP isn't?

[Pds314]

On 11/5/2018 at 10:16 AM, MaverickSawyer said:

Does this have to be stock, or can I use Community Resource Pack? Because there are some seriously expensive resources there.

 

Also, some mods allow you to collect Xenon. Are those allowed if CRP isn't?

I feel like Xenon would make this trivial.

[MaverickSawyer]

So, Ore, LFO, and monoprop only. Got it.

[Laie]

Here's what I tried...

The assembly can launch as you see it; the tall payload can then shuttle between Minmus and LKO indefinitely. A very similar plane (without vector, and Monoprop fuselage instead of LFO) launches half-empty, is fully refuled in orbit, and returns to the runway.

The first launch has a net cost of 120k (210 rollout, 90 recovery); the subsequent flights yield ~77k each.

Only that it doesn't quite work as intended: the Minmus Shuttle is supposed to aerobrake into LKO and was carefully balanced to allow for high angles of attack. Unfortunately, the cargo bay malfunctions: once it's been opened, everything inside will create drag even when it's closed again. This upsets the aerodynamics, and while it can still aerobrake, it needs many passes to do so.