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Making the best Mining system


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This is all completely new to me, so remember that:

I am getting ready for my very very massive Moho mission! So I decided that the first thing to do is to do a scouting mission. I found doing a crew mission to preform the orbital survey and land in the desired spot may be the best way to do it. The main reason why is that I want to have scouting missions that start at the base, then fly to the desired location, then back. But I want to do that a lot of times! So in order to do that I need to do Mining, but here is the thing! I have little to no experience with mining! So I come to the KSP forum community who has experience to tell me more.

1. How to determine the best landing spot

2. How to make a lander that can mine, convert to fuel, and be able to not overheat

3. Other variables that I might need to consider

Thank you very much in advance

EDIT: Images and bold

possible-landing-spots.png?w=676&h=

These are apparently the 90% up spots

the-spacecraft.png?w=1056&h=

This is the spacecraft

Edited by Guest
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WARNING:  I am definitely not an expert, and the rule I go by most of the time is "just eyeball it."  Follow the following instructions at your own risk.

1. Welp, the thing I do is to crank up that M700 cutoff percentage to as high as it can go while still producing colors on the planet, warp over those colors, and then use the Kerbnet Access on the Narrow Band to find a place with good ore.  A 'Tgt.' 9% or higher on the Narrow Band generally means good ore.  I can explain this whole process in more detail if you want.

2. Mining lander design tips. The following are all talking about the big drill and big converter unless otherwise stated.

  • Things you need to bring:  Drill(s), Converter(s), Ore tank(s), and power source.
  • Things you should definitely bring but aren't required: Radiators and an engineer.  The more stars the engineer has, the better.
  • For a power source, I suggest you use fuel cell arrays, but do bring a solar panel so you aren't constantly eating your fuel.
  • I never use the little converter.  It is inefficient and will always overheat no matter how many radiators you put on it.
  • With default ore generation settings and a good ore percentage (14%+), I find the ideal drill to converter ratio is about 4:1. 
  • There's probably some fancy dancy equation out there for electricity consumption, but I generally use 2 fuel cell arrays per drill.  One powers the drill, the other powers ore refinement.  For batteries, 1000 units per drill should be plenty.
  • Here is a link explaining heat management.  Read the "Cooling Specifications" and "Core Cooling" sections.
  • Use action groups, or it will be a complete pain to get the thing going.  You will need 3.  The first group should extend drills, radiators, and solar panels.  Once group 1 has completed, group 2 should start converters, start drills harvesting, and start fuel cells.  When you've finished, group 3 should retract drills, radiators, and solar panels; stop converters and fuel cells; and maybe eject the contents of ore tanks.

3. Some other things:

  • Thermal Control Systems cool any part on the ship.
  • Only have a converter on one refining mode at a time, or it will overheat.
  • If the top half of the drill's piston goes into the ground, it will cause some minor wobbling.

I guess a basic, fully equipped mining rig would have the following (links provided for clarity):

Here is the tutorial I used to learn mining, but some things in it are outdated:

I hope I'm not forgetting anything as it happens a lot. :P  If your mining rig malfunctions, you know who to sue.

Edited by RoninFrog
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2 hours ago, RoninFrog said:
  • Radiators cool any part on the ship.

Forgive me, but I thought only Thermal Control Systems (the radiators that deploy by unfolding) cool any part of the ship? I thought that fixed radiators only cool the part their directly attached to.

Or has that changed in the last couple years?

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Hey ! Long time since I didn't came here.
I built a Exploration space stations long ago. There might be some inspiration for you there

I chose to carry the Ore to the orbit ans refine there.

Edited by Warzouz
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5 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

Forgive me, but I thought only Thermal Control Systems (the radiators that deploy by unfolding) cool any part of the ship? I thought that fixed radiators only cool the part their directly attached to.

Or has that changed in the last couple years?

It didn't, as far as I'm aware. Fixed radiators cool whatever they're directly attached to plus whatever's directly attached to that.

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6 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

Forgive me, but I thought only Thermal Control Systems (the radiators that deploy by unfolding) cool any part of the ship? I thought that fixed radiators only cool the part their directly attached to.

That does ring a bell.  I will edit my answer.

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I thing going all solar with a RTG or two would supply enough for Moho. I have found my landing spot so let's see, time! My landing spot is about 8-9% so how long would it take to convert let's say 4000 m/s of dV

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28 minutes ago, The Doodling Astronaut said:

I thing going all solar with a RTG or two would supply enough for Moho. I have found my landing spot so let's see, time! My landing spot is about 8-9% so how long would it take to convert let's say 4000 m/s of dV?

The only potential problem with solar is having to reboot everything in the morning.  The mining time for 4000 m/s is really hard to predict, but I would say with a wolfhound engine a 5-star engineer on my example of a basic miner, a ballpark estimate would be 20 hours.  There are a lot of variables, though.  Do you mean 8-9% on the Narrow Band or on the Surface Scanner?  I find that the Narrow Band reads at about 2/3 the actual value.

Just googled it, and a day on Moho is really, really long.  Pure solar should be fine.

Edited by RoninFrog
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23 minutes ago, RoninFrog said:

 would be 20 hours.

Real time or Game time?

23 minutes ago, RoninFrog said:

 There are a lot of variables, though.  Do you mean 8-9% on the Narrow Band or on the Surface Scanner?  I find that the Narrow Band reads at about 2/3 the actual value.

Narrow Band, so I guess it might be more

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