Good Ways To Refuel Ships From Ore Outposts?

[DannySwish]

How the hell should I be transferring the fuel that my ore outposts are producing? The best I can come up with is a rover that has a claw which drives back and forth between the two, but I'm terrible at making decent rovers.

Has anybody come up with something more useful? I think it'd be cool if I could make a landing pad that, once landed on, was capable of refueling a ship. No idea how I would go about this, as every ship's design and height is different.

My take is that Squad should introduce some kind of kerbal-operated fuel transfer hose that can be hooked up to fuel tanks from ship A to ship B.

[Blu_C]

I personally prefer having an orbital base and focus on making an efficient fuel hauler that can easily go down to the surface, collect the fuel, then launch back up (but then i'm using modded KSP with Kerbal Attachment System). It is less viable on higher gravity locations with atmosphere if you don't have KAS, but still possible. Just keep in mind that everything you are lugging up and down every trip is more fuel you are burning instead of putting on your refueling station and keep the excess mass to a minimum. The lower gravity the body the more efficiently you can get the fuel up.

[Apollyon]

You need to download the Kerbal Attachment System mod.

[Aerindel]

The best I can come up with is a rover that has a claw which drives back and forth between the two,

That is the best way. I build the entire refinery on wheels and roll it up to the craft and refine fuel directly into the ship to be refueled.

[Wanderfound]

Or:

Landing pad with a claw mounted on something bendy, with some landing legs as actuators to push it into position when necessary. Or just put the claw face-up in the middle of the pad and land directly on it.

[rhadamant]

I wrote a guide somewhat about this on Steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=437378871

Hope it helps!

[michaelvf]

I wrote a guide somewhat about this on Steam.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=437378871

Hope it helps!

Nice guide, lots of inspiration .

I have a questions though - Wouldn't it be easier to just have the rover have a claw like the OP does? Then you wouldn't have to worry so much about having all the docking ports completely aligned when designing them.

[Cebi]

I didnt know that claw could be used for fuel transfer so in 0.90 i had karbonite rig and fuel tanker (orange tank) which docked together on surface via 2.5m docking ports. It was realy challanging for me to "engineer" it and when i finaly get it to work i had to tell it to my wife...she was feeling quite indiferent about that matter as i remember (-:

[Trenchfoot]

I didnt know that claw could be used for fuel transfer so in 0.90 i had karbonite rig and fuel tanker (orange tank) which docked together on surface via 2.5m docking ports. It was realy challanging for me to "engineer" it and when i finaly get it to work i had to tell it to my wife...she was feeling quite indiferent about that matter as i remember (-:

The old MmmmHmmmm That's nice. I've gotten those.

[KerikBalm]

I initially thought about having a mining rig + fuel truck to go to landed fuel tankers (claw helps a lot, instead of having to align docking ports perfectly on the ground), that would then fuel up craft in orbit/ dock with an orbital fuel depot.

I gave up on that idea, as the ISRU equipment isn't so heavy compared to the amount of fuel I'd like to haul.

So, I just have a big fuel tanker with ISRU equipment, and use it to suppy an orbital depot.

[eonmoon]

using mks, and kas/kis for parts, the transfer pipes are lovely since you can then transfer fuel from one craft to another via EVA, currently working a new game up to munar and minmus landings,

[Wjolcz]

You go either Claw or accurate placed docking ports.

Or we can take hostage and force Squad to add actual KAS-like hose.

[Geschosskopf]

I initially thought about having a mining rig + fuel truck to go to landed fuel tankers (claw helps a lot, instead of having to align docking ports perfectly on the ground), that would then fuel up craft in orbit/ dock with an orbital fuel depot.

I gave up on that idea, as the ISRU equipment isn't so heavy compared to the amount of fuel I'd like to haul.

So, I just have a big fuel tanker with ISRU equipment, and use it to suppy an orbital depot.

In any refueling system (stock or mod), the big decision is the amount of inefficiency you can tolerate. I measure efficiency as net amount (as in, fuel shuttle capacity minus fuel shuttle consumption) of product made available in orbit per ton of raw material acquired on the surface. Because surface ore doesn't deplete (yay!), you don't have to worry about wasting any (yay!) so efficiency is really a measure of the number of trips you need to make to deliver the needed amount of product to orbit. If your fuel infrastructure is only for a short-term, low-volume use (like making sure your exploration ship can get back home), then you can tolerate a lot less efficiency. OTOH, if you're planning long-term, high-volume (like a large, permanent colony), you'll be making a lot of trips so you want to be as efficient as possible to minimize this tedium.

The 1st place to find efficiency is in the location of the mine. If your objective is to have an orbital fuel station, then you supply it from an airless, low-gravity moon. Usually there's only 1 but at Jool you have a choice. If your fuel depot is going to be at Laythe, then it's better to mine Vall than Pol because the shorter trip burns less fuel than you save due to landing in Pol's lower gravity. Also, Pol is bugged---try to avoid landing there at all. Anyway, on the moon selected for the mine, you want the mine as close as possible to the equator, to minimize fuel consumption for inclination changes.

The 2nd place where efficiency is made or lost is in the shuttle that flies between the surface mine and the orbital depot. The heavier this is, the more fuel it will consume making the trip, so the less net product it delivers per trip. Therefore, it's more efficient to have the fuel shuttle be nothing but tanks and engines and have the ISRU and drills on other vehicles. However, this adds complexity. Now you need multiple vehicles, all of which have to be launched out there. But if you're building a large permanent colony, you're doing that anyway so might as well splurge here. You'll thank yourself later.

The 3rd place where efficiency comes into play is whether you refine on the surface or in orbit, again looking at the weights involved for the fuel shuttle. Ore conserves mass (1 ton of ore becomes 1 ton of product) so that doesn't make any difference. However, we have no engines that burn straight ore so if you refine in orbit, the fuel shuttle will need ore tanks as well as the LFO tanks and engines it needs anyway. And the ore tanks have been tweaked so their empty weights make it decidedly better to refine on the surface and move finished product than to refine in orbit and move raw material. This is especially the case if you need industrial quantities as the fuel shuttle will be rather big and heavy anyway.

So, the choice basically comes down to a simple, possibly only 1-use all-in-1 miner/ISRU/shuttle ship with limited efficiency, or a complex but more efficient, long-term system of a fuel shuttle separate from the drilling and refining vehicle(s).

I'd have to check the relative production rates of drilling and refining to make sure this works with ore, but here's a trick that worked with Kethane. If it happens that you can drill and refine at the fuel shuttle's landing pad, then the drill/ISRU station can use the smallest tank sizes. You just need a small ore tank for the ISRU to get started on, and small tanks for its products to go into. So you start the drills to get a tiny bit of ore in the system, then you run the drills and the ISRU simultaneously while pumping product out from the small tanks on the ground station into the big tanks on the shuttle (or the rover that will fill the shuttle) that is already docked to the ground station. You only need big tanks on the ground if A) you want a surface fuel depot (say for planes on Laythe), or your drills are on a rover that brings ore back to a fixed ISRU station.

All of that depends on how the ore is distributed. So it's very important to recon the moon thoroughly, then design a system that works best for the situation, rather than build a system and send it out there only to find it's not ideal for how the ore lies.

[Vulcano53]

I solve the problema by setting a processing unit on a station on kerbal orbit and a mining station on Mimnus surface. It is really easy to load large ammounts of ore and return to kerbal and vice versa with no effort an less fuel due Mimnus low gravity 

[Hotel26]

9 hours ago, Vulcano53 said:

processing unit on a station on kerbal orbit

(Welcome to the forum!)

You are 'on topic' in that your proposal is about mining ore on Minmus.  And I suppose that if you were playing Science or Contract, 'earning' the ore on Minmus is free (except for your time), but this would not be a good solution in Sandbox in which you are orbiting (in LKO) very close to the source of free fuel.  You just need a way to get it into LKO or -- preferably -- two ways.  I give to you:

1. Titan v2
2. Titan v3