The outer planets refueling station

[strider3]

As promised, after the epic failure of the Duna mining/refueling station, we go for Dres. The usual parts...drill, ISDU, fuel storage, rover, 2 refueling stations in orbit, and a fuel hauler to get the stuff to the stations.

The Dres swarm...on it's way.

Blah...you've seen it before...;-)

Edited March 20, 2019 by strider3
image issue

[strider3]

The various parts to the Dres mining and refueling mission:

The Hauler, which will transfer the fuel to the 2 orbiting stations

 

The 2 stations, which will orbit Dres:

 

The drill:

 

The ISDU:

The Rover, which will first search for the highest ore concentrations with it's attached surface scanning module. The area has already been scanned with various SCANsat equipment and prime location has been chosen.

Secondly, the rover will be used to transfer fuel to the hauler as I don't see being able to land close enough to the drilling operation, every time, for a pipe connect.

The fuel storage unit. This will hold the mined and  processed fuel and LoX until it is sent to the hauler for transfer to the orbiting refueling stations

 

Although Dres has a very limited gravity, I have still had problems getting the Drill, ISDU and Storage units landed close enough for my engineer to connect them. With that in mind I have added rover ability to the ISDU and Fuel Storage units. This will make landing each of these much less...stressful. I can move them to the optimal location with the rover ability.

 

The entire Dres mining and refueling project is intended to support exploration of Jool, it's satellites and Eeloo. It seemed to me that, to explore these 2 systems, without constant launches from Kerbin, a refueling alternative was required.

Wish me luck, brothers and sisters.

ps. I still don't know how to explore Laythe's water biomes? I could use some help with that.

 

Edited March 17, 2019 by strider3

[KerballingSmasher]

Good luck!

[strider3]

So, after many "mulligans", I finally got the Dres mining base placed, and making resources. As I understand, in KSP, all the really ore rich areas are usually NOT flat...and they aren't lying! So, I made a compromise, Dunie the Engineer found a "relatively" flat area (hmmm) with a 12.36% ore concentration to set up the mining operation on. After many attempts, all the necessary parts are landed, the ISDU and storage units were "rovered" close enough to link and are making fuel. The very light gravity on Dres makes transferring fuel from the mining base to the orbital stations easy...but it does nothing for moving the ISDU and Storage units, on rover wheels, close to the Drill, for linking. It was a long, cautious and very tedious process but it's over, now.

Now we make fuel, LoX and mono and start sending the phase 1 (Jool) exploration and science gathering ships to Dres for refueling. I might even send some Eeloo ships in the same launch window...haven't got that far.

So, here's a couple of shots of the Dres operation:

 

 

[strider3]

Unfortunately, my math on electrical power requirements for this operation missed the mark by quite a bit. Even with all the nukes and solar panels, I can only run at 1/2 production. My best option, it seems, is to "batch" produce fuel and get a nuke power unit on it's way.

[TheTripleAce3]

Exploring laythe's water can be as simple or complex as you like. Make a stick with a decent sized (filled) ore tank on one side, and probe core w/rtg, science, parachutes, antenna (plus batteries to transmit), and even a skycrane if you want to on the bottom if you want to be simple about it while reaching the deep blue.

If you mean surface science and not floor science, make a seaplane.

[strider3]

4 hours ago, TheTripleAce3 said:

Exploring laythe's water can be as simple or complex as you like. Make a stick with a decent sized (filled) ore tank on one side, and probe core w/rtg, science, parachutes, antenna (plus batteries to transmit), and even a skycrane if you want to on the bottom if you want to be simple about it while reaching the deep blue.

If you mean surface science and not floor science, make a seaplane.

I'm thinking water surface only, at this point...that will be hard enough . The problem will be...how do I do the water exploration...do I carry enough fuel to make the seaplane capable of reaching all the water bodies or do I figure out how to refuel the thing. For now my Jool system exploration will be dry land until I learn how to construct something that will work on Laythe's water biomes. Not to mention that I have had no luck flying anything "plane"? LOL!

Edited April 4, 2019 by strider3

[TheTripleAce3]

Just now, Victor3 said:

I'm thinking water surface only, at this point...that will be hard enough . The problem will be...how do I do the water exploration...do I carry enough fuel to make the seaplane capable of reaching all the water bodies or do I figure out how to refuel the thing. For now my Jool system exploration will be dry land until I learn how to construct something that will work on Laythe's water biomes.

A plane with the small ISRU and big drill is viable at Laythe, but powering both at the same time will be "fun".

[strider3]

Just now, TheTripleAce3 said:

A plane with the small ISRU and big drill is viable at Laythe, but powering both at the same time will be "fun".

LOL...a self-refueling amphibious seaplane...now THAT will be a challenge.

Forgetting that this is quite beyond my current construction abilities (LOL), I'm assuming that some form of ore storage must be included? The drills can't send the ore directly to the ISRU, correct?

[TheTripleAce3]

31 minutes ago, Victor3 said:

LOL...a self-refueling amphibious seaplane...now THAT will be a challenge.

Forgetting that this is quite beyond my current construction abilities (LOL), I'm assuming that some form of ore storage must be included? The drills can't send the ore directly to the ISRU, correct?

Literally just one radial ore tank will work, and I'm not sure about the crossfeed constraints on Ore, build a small thing with radial tanks and try it out? 

For building seaplanes, just try it out on Kerbin. If it works there, it usually works on Laythe.

[strider3]

I can't explain this...but I suddenly can run all 4 big drills AND the ISRU AND all my lighting on Dres. As stated earlier I could not do nearly this much previously. The only thing I've done is landed the Dres fuel hauler and linked it to the mining station. The hauler has no nukes, 8 medium solar panels and a large battery...so it being linked should not have made any difference as I would think, in the middle of the night as in the screenie below, I would still have the problem of power consumption overriding the nuke power production. As you can see my electrical power is staying maxed with everything on and running. Weird.

 

[TheTripleAce3]

How bad was the power deficit earlier that you mentioned?

[Torn4dO]

Nice base.

One lil tip though,

since you chose to make this at Dres I would switch to asteroid mining. All asteroids around Dres have a perfect inclination so very easy to reach.

[strider3]

On 4/7/2019 at 4:03 PM, TheTripleAce3 said:

How bad was the power deficit earlier that you mentioned?

I could only run 2 drills OR make fuel (not both), so quite a large deficit. Now, as you see, I can run it all AND lights, at night. If you look at an earlier screenshot, above, you can see my usage at 74.83 with (I believe) all drills running and the ISRU and the lights.

Edited April 9, 2019 by strider3

[TheTripleAce3]

1 minute ago, Victor3 said:

I could only run 2 drills OR make fuel (not both), so quite a large deficit. Now, as you see, I can run it all AND lights, at night. I can't give you an exact number as to the exact deficit.

Ah, so it wouldn't be from Dres' position just being closer to the Sun or something like that then

[strider3]

11 minutes ago, TheTripleAce3 said:

Ah, so it wouldn't be from Dres' position just being closer to the Sun or something like that then

I figured it out. I was not aware that my engineer, Dunnie, must be aboard the base and not on EVA, for full production. As soon as I boarded him in the rover production shot up and electrical charge usage increased:

You can see production and usage, at full "load" at night, in the upper right.

[TheTripleAce3]

2 minutes ago, Victor3 said:

I figured it out. I was not aware that my engineer, Dunnie, must be aboard the base and not on EVA, for full production. As soon as I boarded him in the rover production shot up and electrical charge usage increased:

You can see production and usage, at full "load" at night, in the upper right.

The one time full production would be a bad thing

[strider3]

1 minute ago, TheTripleAce3 said:

The one time full production would be a bad thing

Whats really sad is, if I have finally gotten the numbers right, I will need another 128 nukes to remain at full production 24-7? (deficit of 102 charge per second / nuke charge production of 0.8 sec.). Seems like I might have to sell my original "emergency power" unit as it will be totally inadequate with 32 nukes. I'm going to take a look at fuel cells, instead but...the question will be will they burn more fuel than I can produce with my one ISDU? Back to the calculator!

BTW, anybody want to buy a surface based power unit? It's already in orbit at 350 km over Kerbin and fully refueled with 5,183 DV...best offer? LOL!

[strider3]

OK...if I calculated correctly (), 6 large fuel cell arrays will work. They will produce an extra 108/sec electrical charge (enough to overcome my current 102/sec deficit at night). They will use .12/sec fuel and Lox, reducing my full load production output to .57/sec. LoX and .44/sec. fuel.

Or, I could go with 5 large arrays and, again if my math is correct, I will have enough battery storage (26,600) to last 24 hours of darkness at full production.

Somebody please check my math .

Edited April 9, 2019 by strider3

[TheTripleAce3]

Is the 5 solar arrays compensating for Dres' distance?

[strider3]

2 minutes ago, TheTripleAce3 said:

Is the 5 solar arrays compensating for Dres' distance?

These would be fuel cells, not solar.

[TheTripleAce3]

2 minutes ago, Victor3 said:

These would be fuel cells, not solar.

How does one produce more than they consume through mining?

[strider3]

Just now, TheTripleAce3 said:

How does one produce more than they consume through mining?

Well, if you look at my last screen shot and the amount of fuel and LoX I'm producing at full production, then compare it to what the fuel usage of the large fuel cell arrays are, it's very doable. The fuel cells only use .02/sec fuel and LoX to produce their 18.0/sec electrical charge. With my full load production at 0.69/sec Lox and 0.56/sec fuel, I can easily bring 6 large fuel cell arrays up to Dres and have them producing 108/sec electrical charge (overcoming my full night power deficit) and only reducing my fuel and Lox output by .12 each (so 0.57/sec and 0.44/sec). I will still be able to run at full production 24 - 7.

[TheTripleAce3]

That seems slightly overpowered BUT I guess you do have other means of power production backing them up as well.

 

On a secondary note, why not bring a massive RTG array up there? Part count within render range?

[strider3]

The only RTG's I have are stock...and I would need 128 of them to make up the deficit. 6 large fuel cell arrays will be a much smaller mass craft and easier to get there.

Edited April 9, 2019 by strider3