The Ability to Sell Ore

[thegamingscientist]

With the recent addition of Ore mining in KSP 1.0 long missions have gotten a whole lot easier! But I think that just refuelling isn't fun enough. I am suggesting that they should add the ability to sell ore in career mode for a little bit of extra cash. Imagine having a massive Mün base deticated to mining and have transportation landers that bring tonnes of ore to Kerbin in a blaze of glory only to sell it so you can do it all over again and even more! You could pretend you are some massive trillion dollar ore mining company. Wouldn't it be fun and usefull?

[Twreed87]

It'd be interesting to see if it's feasible to launch empty fuel tanks, fill them up on the Mun, and return them for Funds. Or better yet, park a Class E asteroid in LKO and bring empty tanks there.... OR LAND AN ASTEROID RIGHT BY KSC AND MINE FROM IT!!!

[Wjolcz]

It's probably like third or fourth thread with the same topic and seeing this I hope they look into it if it's not already implemented.

I fully support this idea.

[DuoDex]

Unless I am greatly mistaken, I believe that Ore can be sold for pennies, while LF+O/Monoprop, which the Ore is refined into, is "sold" (i.e. refunded from recovered spacecraft) for a great deal more.*

Interesting to see whether it's a better deal to refine into LF+O or Monoprop, though.

*this is unconfirmed, and is merely my own conjecture from watching huge amounts of KSP-TV.

[Hcube]

Or Xenon maybe ? Xenon is crazy expensive.

[Wjolcz]

Or Xenon maybe ? Xenon is crazy expensive.

Had the same idea few days ago, but it doesn't seem to be an option on the ore converter (RoninPawn's stream), which sucks D:

[Joonatan1998]

Just make sure you can't mine ore on launchpad/runway and then sell it.

[Wjolcz]

Just make sure you can't mine ore on launchpad/runway and then sell it.

It actually looks like Kerbin does have a very poor amount of ore, so there's still hope.

[Giggleplex777]

I think ore should be sold for much more the fuel costs, since it probably has some magical properties (ie. the ability to invert it to different things). I can imagine ore retrieval missions where you have to bring back a certain amount of ore for a large sum of funds in return. Recovering fuel for funds is not ideal as fuel have little value compared to the tanks themselves.

The ore must be valuable, especially if you're going so far to mine it.

[Xavven]

I think ore should be sold for much more the fuel costs, since it probably has some magical properties (ie. the ability to invert it to different things). I can imagine ore retrieval missions where you have to bring back a certain amount of ore for a large sum of funds in return. Recovering fuel for funds is not ideal as fuel have little value compared to the tanks themselves.

The ore must be valuable, especially if you're going so far to mine it.

I agree that Ore should be worth more. WAY more. Not sure liquid fuel and oxidizer is anything special, but think of how much a soil sample of Laythe or Moho would be worth to collectors?

[Tw1]

The ore must be valuable, especially if you're going so far to mine it.

I don't think its value should be inflated above what makes sense, economically. While I am not an expert in this field, an unrefined material is generally worth less than material that has been refined.

Sure, it may defy our laws of chemistry, but to the kerbals, it's probably not that amazing.

KSP (mostly) does a good job of showing the harsh realities of space, as well giving the player things they need to face them.

I think any resource you get from ore needs to be sold at the price you'd buy, or recover it for. You'd be competing with whomever on kerbin supplies these things, and if you're not offering a competitive price, then you won't be getting the buyers.

A while ago, I wanted to start a kethane economics challenge, where you would be allowed to fuel up one ship at the start, and all the others after must be fuelled using kethane collected from space. The challenge would be to see how many flights you could manage.

The point was to show that at KSP level tech, mining for fuel to bring back to kerbin is not the most luctrative prospect.

Edited April 27, 2015 by Tw1

[Hcube]

roverdude said yesterday on twitch that you can sell ore, but that it is as valuable as plain dirt. Just convert it to fuel before selling it then

[kd8azz]

It'd be interesting to see if it's feasible to launch empty fuel tanks, fill them up on the Mun, and return them for Funds. Or better yet, park a Class E asteroid in LKO and bring empty tanks there.... OR LAND AN ASTEROID RIGHT BY KSC AND MINE FROM IT!!!

It would make more sense to me if we had a way to sell items that were already in orbit. A large fuel tanker in orbit should be worth much, much more than a large fuel tanker on Kerbin. Similarly, a facility near Jool would presumably be worth even more, assuming someone wanted it.

[thereaverofdarkness]

It'd be interesting to see if it's feasible to launch empty fuel tanks, fill them up on the Mun, and return them for Funds. Or better yet, park a Class E asteroid in LKO and bring empty tanks there.... OR LAND AN ASTEROID RIGHT BY KSC AND MINE FROM IT!!!

Does anyone know the impact tolerance of an asteroid?

[Vaporo]

Does anyone know the impact tolerance of an asteroid?

According to the cfg file, it is 80 m/s.

[Rdivine]

Selling ore isn't suitable as there's only one space agency on kerbin...

[RoverDude]

Selling ore isn't suitable as you're essentially selling rocks

Ore's value is it's ability to extend missions and create fuel in-situ instead of shipping it up/out. Mining it and returning it, given that it's basically fuel products, is like flying to Germany to get a beer.

[TheMoonRover]

Does anyone know the impact tolerance of an asteroid?

In a previous version I managed to redirect an asteroid onto a kerbin impact trajectory, then detach the rest of the ship so I could try to re-enter the asteroid and land it with no other parts attached. It survived, so the impact tolerance is pretty high. The max temperature got a pretty huge nerf in 1.0 though. It was previously 10^38, but it's now just a few thousand, so it's much like any other part now.