Cost of different fuels.

[Wjolcz]

The new ore is coming in1.0 and I could not find any info about it's actual cost. So I thought "Why not extract ore from surface, bring it to a refinery space station, turn it into fuel, send to Kerbin and recover for profit?"

I can imagine Xenon being the most valuable resource in KSP but couldn't actually find any info about it's cost per unit. I'm guessing it varies with game difficulty? If not maybe there's someone who would point out the costs of different fuels in the stock game?

I wanted to sell Ore but there's no price on it (yet)!

Edited April 25, 2015 by Veeltch

[Alshain]

Because it is based on Karbonite, so most likely hauling ore anywhere is going to be useless. With Karbonite, you would lose more fuel hauling it to orbit than you would gain back. Your going to convert it the moment it comes out of the ground, making the whole thing redundant like Karbonite. I don't know why they bother with ore at all, might as well just let us mine the fuel directly.

I recommend Kethane. It just makes the whole thing more interesting. It has a more efficient conversion as I understand it, so it is better to haul it to where you want it and then convert it. This makes for an interesting gameplay element that Karbonite (and most likely Ore) fails to do.

Edited April 24, 2015 by Alshain

[Wjolcz]

Okay, so after a quick search I found this on KSP wiki if anyone visiting this thread is interested: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Xenon

It compares Xenon with different fuels on the bottom of the page.

[magnemoe]

Okay, so after a quick search I found this on KSP wiki if anyone visiting this thread is interested: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Xenon

It compares Xenon with different fuels on the bottom of the page.

So expensive, then I guess the new large tank will be worth over 50.000 funds. In this case it might be economic to mine from Minmus and export.

However it might even be posible to mine close to spaceport so you just need an rover to recover it

[Streetwind]

You can also look at the price of all stock resources by looking into the appropriate config file. I forget what exactly it is called, but it has the world "resource" in its filename. So if you do a search for that word in /GameData/Squad, you should quickly find it.

Mods that add resources also have them specified in config files exactly the same way, so you can look those up too. Or even change them. Though I recommend using ModuleManager instead of overwriting default files.

[impyre]

Because it is based on Karbonite, so most likely hauling ore anywhere is going to be useless. With Karbonite, you would lose more fuel hauling it to orbit than you would gain back. Your going to convert it the moment it comes out of the ground, making the whole thing redundant like Karbonite. I don't know why they bother with ore at all, might as well just let us mine the fuel directly.

I recommend Kethane. It just makes the whole thing more interesting. It has a more efficient conversion as I understand it, so it is better to haul it to where you want it and then convert it. This makes for an interesting gameplay element that Karbonite (and most likely Ore) fails to do.

I usually agree with Alshain, but on this point I must disagree. It is *purely* a matter of opinion, but Karbonite is superior in virtually every way... like Mary Poppins. Sure, it's different... but it poses it's own unique set of possibilities, challenges, and design angles. For starters, Karbonite can be used as fuel directly or for refining into other fuels. Karonite-based vehicles have some advantages and disadvantages... they are mostly just different. They have lower ISP and higher thrust (fantastic for launch stages)...however, the lower ISP is mostly countered by the fact that Karbonite is extremely dense compared to LFO... this improves empty/full mass ratio offsetting the costs associated with lower ISP. In fact, if karbonite engines had similar ISP's as LFO engines.... they'd be completely overpowered. When coupled with TACLS, there are some parts that can convert LFO into water+oxygen for crew... karbonite cannot be used for that purpose (that I know of). Also, to build a karbonite mining base requires loads of investment (in career anyhow), but is usually well worth it. Coupled with the logistics hub from the MKS/OKS suite, it's a powerful tool. Here's another catch, the tiny karbonite engine is pretty horrible compared to its LFO counterparts and it's bigger Karbonite cousins (apparently Karbonite works best in large doses? Go big or go home?) *however*, tiny karbonite fuelled probes/rovers can make use of the tiny karbonite drills / generators to extend their mission indefinitely. Sure, the tiny drills are horribly inefficient... and coupled with the mini karbonite generators will only drain your karbonite/electricity... but if coupled with some other energy source (solar panels or rtgs) you can refill on the fly in situ (wherever karbonite can be found)... this can be a huge deal, maybe even worth the inconvenience of suffering smaller dV's. Karbonite's more free licensing means that more mods from other authors support karbonite (any which support CRP I imagine). Also, karbonite can be collected in numerous ways, including atmospheric scoops, oceanic extractors (for places like eve) and drills... while to my knowledge, kethane is slightly more limited. And last, (but certainly not least), karbonite is found in unlimited deposits (it can never be mined out)... which means you'll never *have* to move your base... what it *does* mean is that if you want to do anything useful, you need to choose a good site (scansat helps a lot). To contrast with kethane: kethane has deposits which are slowly consumed (at least used to be how it was), you *shouldn't need to ever worry about depleting it, but it isn't impossible either. I will say this in defense of kethane, I freakin love the planetary overlays... if karbonite had those beautiful things, I probably wouldn't have scansat installed (oh, who am I kidding... i like making maps).

If it sounds like I'm a raving stupid fanboi... it's probably because I am. </totally biased opinion>

[PringleMan]

Well lets also not forget that Karbonite was developed as an assist to the MKS/OKS mods. Karbonite involved more than just ore, and you did not just process it into fuel. You used it to manufacture parts, which were required for operations kolonies. You could also manufacture those resources to sell on Kerbin, and that WAS worth it, especially if you had a reliable ssto to bring the material back with.

So as far as straight conversion from ore to fuel, I personally probably would go with kethane. But the actual resource system itself is much more robust and Roverdude wrote it to be much more accessible and modable. At least, his personal version of it was.

[impyre]

Karbonite was developed as an *open alternative to kethane*, and this development was prompted by the change in the licensing for kethane. I believe I recall roverdude saying as much himself. Regardless of why it was started, he's always done a very good job of ensuring that people can pick-and-choose which mods they want from the USI catalog without feeling like they are "missing something". Karbonite stands very well on it's own imo, and I'd still choose it for fuel over kethane even if I had no other mods at all. (Huge TWR is super fun ;P). Even though each mod stands on it's own merits really well, or perhaps because of that fact, I find that the longer I played with USI mods, the more I downloaded... until I had to have the entire catalog. Though I may uninstall the one that introduces karborundum... it's pretty overpowered (at least for normal kerbol system... in RSS it might feel less overpowered).

[Alshain]

Karbonite was developed as an *open alternative to kethane*, and this development was prompted by the change in the licensing for kethane. I believe I recall roverdude saying as much himself. Regardless of why it was started, he's always done a very good job of ensuring that people can pick-and-choose which mods they want from the USI catalog without feeling like they are "missing something". Karbonite stands very well on it's own imo, and I'd still choose it for fuel over kethane even if I had no other mods at all. (Huge TWR is super fun ;P). Even though each mod stands on it's own merits really well, or perhaps because of that fact, I find that the longer I played with USI mods, the more I downloaded... until I had to have the entire catalog. Though I may uninstall the one that introduces karborundum... it's pretty overpowered (at least for normal kerbol system... in RSS it might feel less overpowered).

Well I think that was exactly my problem when I used Karbonite, I was missing something. I was missing the ability to build orbital processing stations like I did with Kethane because Karbonite cost more fuel to get to orbit than it produced.

But as far as the original question goes....

"Why not extract ore from surface, bring it to a refinery space station, turn it into fuel, send to Kerbin and recover for profit?"

I answered it. You can't do that with Karbonite and I doubt you will be able to with Ore because it costs more than you would make and if you want to do that, use Kethane. You said you disagree, but you disagree with what? I answered correctly.

Edited April 25, 2015 by Alshain

[Superfluous J]

To get back to the actual question ("can you sell mined, processed, and returned fuel for profit?") there is no functional difference between:

Mining the ore, transferring it to a space station, processing it, and returning the processed fuel to Kerbin.

Mining the ore, processing it, transferring the processed fuel to space and then to Kerbin.

In that second case, yes. You can make money doing that. Note that it'll likely take longer and be more involved both time-wise and infrastructure-wise than just completing a few contracts. But it'll also likely be a lot more fun, and that's what this game's about. It's not even cheating. It's exploiting the natural resources of the Sunar system to fund your space program.

[ddenis]

Also there may be no need in travaling to other Planets to mine ore... some good deposit can be available on Kerbin. But building a mining base there would require a whole fleet of planes and track to deliver mining modules and empty tanks to the spot.

[Wjolcz]

Also there may be no need in travaling to other Planets to mine ore... some good deposit can be available on Kerbin. But building a mining base there would require a whole fleet of planes and track to deliver mining modules and empty tanks to the spot.

I hope there won't be many ore-rich spots on Kerbin. That would kinda slow the space exploration part of the game.

Thanks for all the replies, guys! It should be more of a discussion than question thread right now! I'm changing this to answered unless some mod wants to move it to some other, more appropriate subforum.

[JTpopcorn]

To get back to the actual question ("can you sell mined, processed, and returned fuel for profit?") there is no functional difference between:

Mining the ore, transferring it to a space station, processing it, and returning the processed fuel to Kerbin.

Mining the ore, processing it, transferring the processed fuel to space and then to Kerbin.

In that second case, yes. You can make money doing that. Note that it'll likely take longer and be more involved both time-wise and infrastructure-wise than just completing a few contracts. But it'll also likely be a lot more fun, and that's what this game's about. It's not even cheating. It's exploiting the natural resources of the Sunar system to fund your space program.

While you will make money either way, Karbonite makes a processing station a waste as the Karbonite has more mass then the fuel it produces. One of the things people liked about kethane was the logistics of transporting the mined resource to a station for processing, which with Karbonite, is a waste of fuel and money. This is due to Kethane converting into an equal or higher mass of LFO making it more efficient to transfer as kethane rather than LFO.

So overall, yes you can make money either way but one method will be far far better than the other.

[GoSlash27]

I'm not following this line of reasoning.

Who would you sell the fuel to, and why? The only person who's ever going to use it is you. How can you have a for- profit business when you're the only customer?

Confused,

-Slashy

[Wjolcz]

I'm not following this line of reasoning.

Who would you sell the fuel to, and why? The only person who's ever going to use it is you. How can you have a for- profit business when you're the only customer?

Confused,

-Slashy

What I meant here is getting paid for recovering fuel. You send an empty tank -> fill it with fuel -> recover -> ching ching! $$$!

[Superfluous J]

So overall, yes you can make money either way but one method will be far far better than the other.

That's what I like to refer to as "realistic."

[Admac]

The one thing everyone seems to love about kethane drove me crazy, Mining a 100 tons of fuel, bring to orbit, throw out all the parts that aren't LF or Ox, then I've got like 120 tons of fuel. I assume it's refining involved some sort of energy to mass or something, but that if flagrantly ignored conservation of mass confused me. Not to say designing refining ship missions that got heavier as they flew wasn't interesting, it did feel super broken.

[magnemoe]

To get back to the actual question ("can you sell mined, processed, and returned fuel for profit?") there is no functional difference between:

Mining the ore, transferring it to a space station, processing it, and returning the processed fuel to Kerbin.

Mining the ore, processing it, transferring the processed fuel to space and then to Kerbin.

In that second case, yes. You can make money doing that. Note that it'll likely take longer and be more involved both time-wise and infrastructure-wise than just completing a few contracts. But it'll also likely be a lot more fun, and that's what this game's about. It's not even cheating. It's exploiting the natural resources of the Sunar system to fund your space program.

True, if you used kethante or karbonite you usually saved on converting before moving it, benefit of late convert is that you can make that you want, typical monoprop is hard to get right.

Looks like LV-N will only use LF not oxidizer so you might want to delay oxygen production so you get that you need.

[Superfluous J]

True, if you used kethante or karbonite you usually saved on converting before moving it, benefit of late convert is that you can make that you want, typical monoprop is hard to get right.

Looks like LV-N will only use LF not oxidizer so you might want to delay oxygen production so you get that you need.

That's why I set up conversions for LF, O, and Monoprop and fill all the tanks on my ground station. Then I have a shuttle that can fill up all 3 and lift it into orbit to a station that can hold lots of all 3 as well.

Then any ship that comes by and wants any type of fuel can just dock to the station and take what they need. Including - if I wanted to - an SSTO that comes up, fills up, and goes home to sell the fuel.

[GoSlash27]

What I meant here is getting paid for recovering fuel. You send an empty tank -> fill it with fuel -> recover -> ching ching! $$$!

Right... but I'm still not getting the logic behind doing that.

You go out and mine/ refine ore to make fuel.

It's cheaper than what you pay retail at KSC, so that's good.

So you deorbit it and recover it and turn what appears to be a profit.

*But* when you run your next mission, you're buying back the fuel you just sold them, so your profit is lost. And it's at the bottom of the gravity well, so you have to spend even more to get it to orbit.

Why not just leave the fuel in orbit in an orbital depot and use it to fuel your missions there? Not only do you not have to pay retail for the fuel, but your shipping costs of getting the fuel to LKO where it's useful are eliminated.

I've got to be missing something here...

[Superfluous J]

I've got to be missing something here...

You're making it more complicated than it is.

A trip to Minmus and back to collect fuel costs X to launch (minus any savings for recovering stages).

The money you make from recovering the ship full of fuel nets you Y.

If Y is a lot larger than X, it's worth it. If Y is a little larger than X, it's probably better to spend that time doing contracts. If Y is less than X, then it's not worth it ever.

[KrazyKrl]

One big thing people are forgetting; asteroids.

I'd imagine finding a nice medium sized asteroid; and moving it into a decent orbit would be amazing for mining. Sure, it'll cost fuel getting it parked in orbit; but it might be very lucrative as a fuel station.

[Alshain]

You're making it more complicated than it is.

A trip to Minmus and back to collect fuel costs X to launch (minus any savings for recovering stages).

The money you make from recovering the ship full of fuel nets you Y.

If Y is a lot larger than X, it's worth it. If Y is a little larger than X, it's probably better to spend that time doing contracts. If Y is less than X, then it's not worth it ever.

He is actually making sense though. Why bring it back to Kerbin just to re-buy it from the VAB... again, and then you have to lift it off of Kerbin too. It would be better to park it in orbit and use very little fuel to lift a lighter craft with less fuel that could then re-fuel in orbit. Add it all up and you are lifting less weight and therefore saving fuel, and THEREFORE saving funds.

[GoSlash27]

He is actually making sense though. Why bring it back to Kerbin just to re-buy it from the VAB... again, and then you have to lift it off of Kerbin too. It would be better to park it in orbit and use very little fuel to lift a lighter craft with less fuel that could then re-fuel in orbit. Add it all up and you are lifting less weight and therefore saving fuel, and THEREFORE saving funds.

^ That's my point. Although since I never use mods, I have zero experience with this. It is therefore entirely possible that I'm missing something that's not immediately obvious.

By my way of thinking there can be no "profit" when you're the only consumer in the economy. There can only be "savings".

Looked at from that perspective, there's no economic reason to return fuel to Kerbin's surface if you're just going to turn around and lift it to orbit again. Better to just leave it up there and do what Alshain said.

Best,

-Slashy

[Superfluous J]

But why buy fuel from Kerbin when you can use free fuel you brought back to KSC? If you earn back what you sold it for, it's exactly the same as using it yourself.

Also, why convert it to LFO? Convert it to Xenon. That's where the real money is.

I like the idea of the asteroid best. If you could land it, you could drill it and process it on the ground. Spawn a fuel truck with empty tanks, drive it to the asteroid, fill it up, and recover.