Asteroid Mining

[KerbMav]

Or a mission to the sun.

[Jarin]

Haven't paid much attention to asteroids in 0.9 but i captured a class D (90% 200t~) today and have to say they are totally worth it.

Refuelled 100% of my capture mission and there is still like 150t left of resources.

Finally a reason to capture those rocks!

http://www.pottwalblog.ch/wp-content/upload/you_rock_you_rule.jpg

Some pics:

http://imgur.com/a/2yjX1

Will enslave more rocks soon.

How does that puller-tug even work? Seems like the rock should be blocking your thrust. God knows it has every time I've ever tried building one. Never had anything but pusher tugs actually function for rock-moving.

[Captain Sierra]

How does that puller-tug even work? Seems like the rock should be blocking your thrust. God knows it has every time I've ever tried building one. Never had anything but pusher tugs actually function for rock-moving.

KSP only checks so far for exhaust blockage (typically much less than the length of the particle effect). You can get away with a lot more than you think in terms of pullers, just be sure to lock engine gimbal unless you want Bad Things.

[Jarin]

I'll just have to build my rock-tugs longer, I guess. God knows pulling would be a crapton easier than trying to balance these stupid pusher tugs.

[katateochi]

I just want to say how much I'm enjoying asteroid capture missions now! Really didn't like them before, kinda felt like Sisyphus (pushing his bolder up a hill), but now with mining it's totally changed. I used to find that if I managed to get one back to orbit, it was only just and never with enough dV to maneuver it to a useful parking orbit. Now I can get fuel out of them I can bring them back to a nice neat parking orbit, and still have fuel to mine.

The tug I have is totally self sustaining and has now brought back 3 class C's, 1 class E and 1 class A back to LKO and the asteroids have provided all the fuel it needs to just keep on doing that indefinitely;

I did go a bit over the top with the system for extracting ore from them once in LKO, a central-control/ore silo section with 4 deployable drill modules that unpack;

The arm that the drills attach to repositions to form a connection point for large tankers;

- - - Updated - - -

I'll just have to build my rock-tugs longer, I guess. God knows pulling would be a crapton easier than trying to balance these stupid pusher tugs.

Pushing them works fine if you make sure you attach to them directly on their centre of mass. Right click and target the centre of mass, then move around it to find a reasonably flat spot and then line up with the pink marker and kill all relative velocity before moving in for the kill capture.

[Rath]

I found an asteroid with 20000(Not a typo) tons of ore... It was an E class though.

[Levelord]

I just want to say how much I'm enjoying asteroid capture missions now! Really didn't like them before, kinda felt like Sisyphus (pushing his bolder up a hill), but now with mining it's totally changed. I used to find that if I managed to get one back to orbit, it was only just and never with enough dV to maneuver it to a useful parking orbit. Now I can get fuel out of them I can bring them back to a nice neat parking orbit, and still have fuel to mine.

The tug I have is totally self sustaining and has now brought back 3 class C's, 1 class E and 1 class A back to LKO and the asteroids have provided all the fuel it needs to just keep on doing that indefinitely;

http://i.imgur.com/mCN3IT3l.jpg

I did go a bit over the top with the system for extracting ore from them once in LKO, a central-control/ore silo section with 4 deployable drill modules that unpack;

http://i.imgur.com/1JkOxszm.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/rMaFBaIm.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LMIjOZNl.jpg

The arm that the drills attach to repositions to form a connection point for large tankers;

- - - Updated - - -

Pushing them works fine if you make sure you attach to them directly on their centre of mass. Right click and target the centre of mass, then move around it to find a reasonably flat spot and then line up with the pink marker and kill all relative velocity before moving in for the kill capture.

How in the world did you even manage to launch that 4-drill mining rig?

[katateochi]

How in the world did you even manage to launch that 4-drill mining rig?

The drill bits went up separately from the main control section, two drill modules at a time. The tricky thing with that was sacking two modules that both had claws, so the claws where attached to docking ports and radially mounted to a set of decouplers and the main drill sections where then stacked above them. On arrival each drill module picked up it's claw and then went to join the main craft.

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Totally over complicated and unnecessary (12 drills extracts ore far faster than 1 converter can process it), but I like over-complicated. Unfortunately KSP 1.0.2 doesn't seem to like things with 300 parts and it got pretty laggy (I used to be able to make things with 500 parts and still play, so that's kinda sad for me, I hope they fix that).

[spaceBrezel]

How does that puller-tug even work? Seems like the rock should be blocking your thrust. God knows it has every time I've ever tried building one. Never had anything but pusher tugs actually function for rock-moving.

Did some testing on the launchpad before launching it:

If your engines burn and destroy the wings on top you are too close...

[CaribouGone]

I just want to say how much I'm enjoying asteroid capture missions now! Really didn't like them before, kinda felt like Sisyphus (pushing his bolder up a hill), but now with mining it's totally changed. I used to find that if I managed to get one back to orbit, it was only just and never with enough dV to maneuver it to a useful parking orbit. Now I can get fuel out of them I can bring them back to a nice neat parking orbit, and still have fuel to mine.

The tug I have is totally self sustaining and has now brought back 3 class C's, 1 class E and 1 class A back to LKO and the asteroids have provided all the fuel it needs to just keep on doing that indefinitely;

http://i.imgur.com/mCN3IT3l.jpg

I did go a bit over the top with the system for extracting ore from them once in LKO, a central-control/ore silo section with 4 deployable drill modules that unpack;

http://i.imgur.com/1JkOxszm.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/rMaFBaIm.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/LMIjOZNl.jpg

The arm that the drills attach to repositions to form a connection point for large tankers;

Wow.

because the mining units are all attached to the same 'craft,' does the ore feed into the converter properly despite not appearing to be connected?

[katateochi]

Wow.

because the mining units are all attached to the same 'craft,' does the ore feed into the converter properly despite not appearing to be connected?

Yeah, once attached to the asteroid it's all considered to be one craft so the main module is filled. The drills also get most of their power from the main module.

If I was playing with KAS then I'd probably add fuel lines just to make it look better, but that wouldn't be needed for functionality.

[Azimech]

I'm sorry to do this here but ...

Katateochi, your inbox is full

[katateochi]

I'm sorry to do this here but ...

Katateochi, your inbox is full

oh! thanks for letting me know! (wish we got a notification when that happens). It's cleared out now!

Sorry for the Off-topic everyone.

[CaribouGone]

Yeah, once attached to the asteroid it's all considered to be one craft so the main module is filled. The drills also get most of their power from the main module.

If I was playing with KAS then I'd probably add fuel lines just to make it look better, but that wouldn't be needed for functionality.

sweet, i figured as much. time to go grab some 'riods!

[enroger]

Here is my experience:

http://i.imgur.com/Y0URP8W.png

144t of ore ... basically, enough fuel for a lifetime of space exploration.

Praise Kerbol! You can almost think of that asteroid as a giant ultralight fuel tank with a fuel mass ratio of 1:11(including refinery). Now I know what my Jool-5 mothership will look like... a giant potato with multiple ships stuck to it. Now is this common or incredible luck?

[Kevin Wing]

I don't know how lucky you have to be to get a big E (hehe biggy, just cracked myself up a little), but I found a Class E with over 2,000 tons.

I did notice that the game doesn't finalize what the Asteroid is until you get close to it. So you could set up an intercept to a Class E and if you don't like the size revert to an earlier save and try again.

I found this out because I didn't like the ship I made to grab the asteroid so I went back to an earlier save and built the ship differently. When I returned to the same asteroid it was more than twice as big!

It was fun to bring that big puppy home. I used a fly by around Mun to help me bring it to near equatorial from a highly inclined Kerbin orbit, and now it's still well over 200 tons of ore parked at about 450k x 450k.

EDIT: Oops, missed a zero in that size. Here's a screen shot:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=453112502

Edited June 1, 2015 by Kevin Wing

[Homusubi]

What is worth it, however, is to building a mining base on Minmus and sending the ore/fuel up to an orbital base for refueling. That's a lot easier to do than refueling from Kerbin.

What is even better than that is to make a ship with mining and ISRU onboard and landing at Minmus before leaving on interplanetary missions.

[Thegamer211]

1.0 might have been the opportunity to add more than one minable resource for the nuke-engines and RTGs - stuff only found on Eve (hehehe), Moho and asteroids.

And Eeloo