Miners, miners, miners everywhere - Post your pics here

[SlithyTove]

I do all my mining outside gravity wells.

Sisyphus Wide MK II with deployed reaction/mining probes doing it's thing:

And the first successful Sisyphus class the MK III:

I have a lot of these things. It may be becoming a problem....

[CrashTestDanny]

Very nice! Love the built-up trusses... How do those probes work? Got a craft file to share?

Danny

[SlithyTove]

Very nice! Love the built-up trusses... How do those probes work? Got a craft file to share?

Sure thing!

http://kerbalx.com/SlithyTove/Sisyphus-Wide-II

That's the most tested design so far. Though I have some newer one's in flight testing that will likely replace it. My main issue with it is part count.

Each probe is a mini-spaceship with just RCS thrusters, a claw, and some reaction wheels. Sometimes I add other things to try and pull weight off the main craft which is what is happening with the mining equipment on this one.

The probes serve a few purposes:

First, they spread the torque of turning the craft out over multiple claws. In this case 7. Less torque on each one results in less wobble and less crash inducing instability or kraken attacks.

Second, they pull some weight off the main craft. The lighter the main craft is, the better from a stability standpoint. It ends up being more like the asteroid turns the mothership rather than the other way around.

Third, they help keep it pointed in the right direction. No matter how hard you try to find the center of mass, you are always slightly off which causes sideways torque under thrust. If you just have one ship trying to compensate it will put pressure on the claw which will bend, then more compensation, then escalating oscillation then doom. But many competing sources of torque seem to do the trick. There is some wobble, but if I can keep it under a 15 degree cone of where I am pointing at, I call it pretty good.

To keep part count lower, the mothership relies on the docked probes for RCS and most of it's reaction torque. When an asteroid is spent the probes just re-dock and the ship flies off to find the next roid.

Flying unladen is a bit tricky, it is very large and can roll in one direction much, much faster than the other. When laden just tell SAS to find your maneuver node and wait, it will settle out eventually. Also, the arms are only built up to handle the mild torque of the nukes, so they can flap a bit during maneuvers. They settle out under load pretty quickly and easing on and off throttle helps.

It is fragile on kerbin and a drag factory. To achieve orbit go straight up until you almost completely clear the atmosphere. If you try a gravity turn in atmosphere you will not go to space today. Also, as mentioned before, you cannot run the ISRUs at the same time as the engines due to a fuel flow bug in Kerbal code. It will throttle down one of the eight engines which will cause catastrophic instability if not caught quickly enough.

[CrashTestDanny]

Sure thing!

http://kerbalx.com/SlithyTove/Sisyphus-Wide-II

That's the most tested design so far. Though I have some newer one's in flight testing that will likely replace it. My main issue with it is part count.

Each probe is a mini-spaceship with just RCS thrusters, a claw, and some reaction wheels. Sometimes I add other things to try and pull weight off the main craft which is what is happening with the mining equipment on this one.

The probes serve a few purposes:

First, they spread the torque of turning the craft out over multiple claws. In this case 7. Less torque on each one results in less wobble and less crash inducing instability or kraken attacks.

Second, they pull some weight off the main craft. The lighter the main craft is, the better from a stability standpoint. It ends up being more like the asteroid turns the mothership rather than the other way around.

Third, they help keep it pointed in the right direction. No matter how hard you try to find the center of mass, you are always slightly off which causes sideways torque under thrust. If you just have one ship trying to compensate it will put pressure on the claw which will bend, then more compensation, then escalating oscillation then doom. But many competing sources of torque seem to do the trick. There is some wobble, but if I can keep it under a 15 degree cone of where I am pointing at, I call it pretty good.

To keep part count lower, the mothership relies on the docked probes for RCS and most of it's reaction torque. When an asteroid is spent the probes just re-dock and the ship flies off to find the next roid.

Flying unladen is a bit tricky, it is very large and can roll in one direction much, much faster than the other. When laden just tell SAS to find your maneuver node and wait, it will settle out eventually. Also, the arms are only built up to handle the mild torque of the nukes, so they can flap a bit during maneuvers. They settle out under load pretty quickly and easing on and off throttle helps.

It is fragile on kerbin and a drag factory. To achieve orbit go straight up until you almost completely clear the atmosphere. If you try a gravity turn in atmosphere you will not go to space today. Also, as mentioned before, you cannot run the ISRUs at the same time as the engines due to a fuel flow bug in Kerbal code. It will throttle down one of the eight engines which will cause catastrophic instability if not caught quickly enough.

Hey - have you double-checked resources while that problem is happening? I did when I encountered it on a recent design and noticed that I was out of electricity because my solar arrays were in and my fuel cells were off. I flipped on the fuel cells and that provided the defecit so the engines would all run while the ISRU was running...

Anyhow, thanks for the craft!

- - - Updated - - -

Here's a couple of albums showing my latest shameless hack of someone else's design...

Did I mention I only steal from the best?

Javascript is disabled. View full album

Javascript is disabled. View full album

and here's the thread I posted about it...

Danny

[SlithyTove]

Hey - have you double-checked resources while that problem is happening? I did when I encountered it on a recent design and noticed that I was out of electricity because my solar arrays were in and my fuel cells were off. I flipped on the fuel cells and that provided the defecit so the engines would all run while the ISRU was running...

Yeah, didn't seem to matter much. I could have full everything with more than enough energy coming in through the panels for battery levels not to drop, full tanks fuel tanks etc. Tried some combinations, but nothing worked. It was intermittent and unpredictable though. Might work for a little bit and then 2.5 minutes into the burn it starts dropping thrust and then I'm into panic mode again.

Until that fix that sucker I'll just run them seperately or only run them on a single engine craft.

[fenya]

CargoPlane 18 Antaeus 2X

Has a huge cargo Bay and can carry up to 50 tons anywhere!

But It's still too small for my base at Laythe)

[CrashTestDanny]

CargoPlane 18 Antaeus 2X

Has a huge cargo Bay and can carry up to 50 tons anywhere!

And you left out it's gorgeous!

Danny.

[Bulbashenko]

[Jakalth]

Just an ugly little mining rover. Ok, not so ugly, and not so little, but it gets the job done. This one is destined for Duna. It can deorbit it's self and land on the surface, drive around(all be it, carefully...), refuel it's self once explorations are done, and relaunch it's self to orbit. It has a TWR of 1.30 in Duna atmosphere so launching for orbit can be tight on fuel. But for descending, it has an additional 8 parachutes and 8 airbrakes to help slow it down. On the surface, it flexes a bit and turns like a bus, but it works. Top speed: 24m/s. Top safe speed on uneven surfaces: 12m/s roughly...

I really need to make these things more compact...

[CitizenAerospace]

Stock, except the colour. I'm doing the Elcano challenge with it. It's not only a miner, but also a high speed amphibious truck, capable of sustained 55 m/s driving (in oxygen atmo)

http://imgur.com/a/3Wt4F

This thing is actually so awesome!

[Dobelong]

How did I do?

[Castille7]

That's an impressive set of wings! Nice craft design O-Doc!

[Castille7]

3 hours ago, Dobelong said:

How did I do?

Need more pictures to show it's performance...

[evader]

Sure it looks ugly but the robotic mining rover crams the ship's engine, science, and ISRU, all inside a half sized MK3 cargo bay.  It took some creative engineering to make it fit while being light enough for the ship to VTOL from Kerbin and reach orbit.  The engine acts as a booster when climbing steep hills in low gravity environments.

[Castille7]

@evader That's one crafty little craft, in spite of it's strange appearance its very versatile!

Edited December 28, 2015 by castille7

[Mister Dilsby]

Stock craft: the Quadhammer, now undergoing trials on Mun and Minmus. Fits comfortably in three Mk2 cargo bays laid end to end, which is the design requirement that drove the rather odd layout you see below. Generous tanks and four aerospikes give it enough TWR and dV to land on Tylo, fuel and reach orbit again. Seating for six. Four drills, ISRU, and six fuel cell arrays so the mining equipment still runs well even in total darkness. 80t fully fueled, and carries a full science package in the cargo bay aft. Works OK as an RCS-powered rover in light gravity, though of course it would need to use the main engines to hop over any serious hills.

...the Mk1 pictured above is a little bendy at full thrust; will add some bracing around the center section for the Mk2 that goes to Tylo and Vall. I admit that flying it can take a bit of getting used to. There's a little probe core just above that tiny ore tank, on the COM, as a 'control here' point--but I often find it more intuitive to control from the cockpit and aim the nose where I need it to go even though the thrust is orthogonal to the cockpit's control direction.

Edited January 2, 2016 by Kuzzter

[gavman420SSJ]

it took 96 days to mine about 7000 fuel from the mun using one drill. admittedly that was a low concentration spot.  what kind of times do you guys get? i would love to be able to fill up in just a few days

[Rune]

13 hours ago, gavman420SSJ said:

it took 96 days to mine about 7000 fuel from the mun using one drill. admittedly that was a low concentration spot.  what kind of times do you guys get? i would love to be able to fill up in just a few days

Having a lvl 3 engineer on board is kind of a must, for their ore extraction multiplier, and landing on a high concentration site allows you to run the equipment with fuel cells using a fraction of the fuel you extract, 24/7 and where the sun doesn't shine as much. On a related note, does anyone know if the engineer can be sitting on a chair to provide its bonus? I need to know for a thing.

 

Rune. Would save me finding out the hard way.

[Jakalth]

4 hours ago, Rune said:

On a related note, does anyone know if the engineer can be sitting on a chair to provide its bonus? I need to know for a thing.

 

Rune. Would save me finding out the hard way.

 

build prototype, place on runway, mine, get results.  could always do that before building you main craft.  give it a probe core, so you can disembark you kerbal engineer and see if the numbers change.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Jakalth

[gavman420SSJ]

9 hours ago, Rune said:

Having a lvl 3 engineer on board is kind of a must, for their ore extraction multiplier, and landing on a high concentration site allows you to run the equipment with fuel cells using a fraction of the fuel you extract, 24/7 and where the sun doesn't shine as much. On a related note, does anyone know if the engineer can be sitting on a chair to provide its bonus? I need to know for a thing.

 

Rune. Would save me finding out the hard way.

wow. i set down on a 5 or 6% spot, this time with a 5 star engineer and completed mining 7200 ore in like 2 days. looks like sigcee kerman isnt coming home any time soon. thanks for the advice

[Rune]

7 hours ago, gavman420SSJ said:

wow. i set down on a 5 or 6% spot, this time with a 5 star engineer and completed mining 7200 ore in like 2 days. looks like sigcee kerman isnt coming home any time soon. thanks for the advice

Glad to have been of help.

12 hours ago, Jakalth said:

 

build prototype, place on runway, mine, get results.  could always do that before building you main craft.  give it a probe core, so you can disembark you kerbal engineer and see if the numbers change.

Well, I finally got around to it. The runway didn't work, since I'm working on small drills, but the nearby hills do the trick, and yes, I can confirm, engineers give their drilling bonus sitting on chairs. My idea to make a lander do triple duty as miner and tanker keeps on going full steam ahead!

 

Rune. It helps that the lander is a kerbin SSTO with payload bay.

[gavman420SSJ]

here is mine after a few revisions http://imgur.com/a/5zDAR

it works great on minmus, engines are a bit underpowered for mun with only about 1.3 twr. i wasnt sure about power use so i put two big fuel cells when it probably only needs one of the small ones to run on 8% ore

 

 

Edited January 6, 2016 by gavman420SSJ
inline images

[Majorjim!]

Just now, gavman420SSJ said:

here is mine after a few revisions http://imgur.com/a/5zDAR

it works great on minmus, engines are a bit underpowered for mun with only about 1.3 twr. i wasnt sure about power use so i put two big fuel cells when it probably only needs one of the small ones to run on 8% ore

That is lovely looking! If you want to post the album to the page take this part of the link: 5zDAR and paste it into the window that pops up when you click the little white [ i ] symbol top right of the edit bit above.

[Zebulonious Kerman]

Hey everyone, I just uploaded my modest miner, MOEL 3 to KerbalX.  Check it out here! https://kerbalx.com/Zebulonious/MOEL-3-Stock

Zeb

Edited February 19, 2016 by Zebulonious Kerman
add pic

[WhiteKnuckle]

Looks very stable Zebulonious.

I guess I should post a few of mine here since I've been concentrating so much on ISRU stuff recently.

 

The Bramble from Project ABEI:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/132075-project-abei-anywhere-but-eve-indefinitely/

 

The Condor Mk1: A VTOL Kerbin hopper.

And an as-yet untested Duna spaceplane: