How efficient is your Minmus mining operation? Share your pics

[Laie]

How you figure? . Do not bother with a refueling system within Kerbin's SOI. Ore is no different.

It boils down to several things. First, there's the sheer time and hassle of it all compared to just launching what you need to start with. But on the fuel side, it's also cheaper to do that, too. This is because the heavier a ship, the more fuel it needs to generate a given amount of dV. Thus, moving large quantities of fuel (and thus a heavy ship) consumes more fuel than you save save by putting the remainder into another ship.

I don't quite get it. My refinery/lander/tanker combo requires about 20-25% of it's capacity for itself, granted. But I don't think it's fair to attach a monetary cost to that overhead. I get free fuel in LKO and can SSTO many vessels which otherwise couldn't.

There is the hassle, of course, which is a more valid argument IMO. But for a one-time investment, I can get infinite fuel in LKO. How shall that not be worthwhile?

[Othuyeg]

[Archgeek]

Coming back from Minmus surface and rendezvousing in LKO with the fuel depot can takes anything from 500-1000m/s depending on how well you aerobrake (and more if you don't aerobrake), but this time the ferry is heavy with fuel so the amount of fuel consumed is actually rather greater than what it needed for the outward trip even with dV on the low end of that scale. Plus whatever mono the tanker uses during docking. On top of this, unless you're adept at launching straight to a rendezvous, whatever comes up from Kerbin will have to spend about 300m/s on top of its launch cost to rendezvous with the station (plus mono for docking) to use any of the fuel from Minmus.

Well there's your problem -- you should have your fuel depot out at Minmus. Just launch or construct your interplanetary vessels with only 800 to 1km/s delta-v on board for the trip to the Minmus gas station, either dock with the depot itself or an intermediary tanker depending on your style, load up on what you need, abuse Minmus or the Mun for a free inclination change and/or gravity slingshot to make up for the lost near-kerbin Oberth effect, and enjoy the savings in lifter cost and amusingly short transfer burn times for the low low price of a more interesting mission profile plus upkeep of the fuel depot and mining operation, no silly dragging of a heavy tanker up and down Kerbin's gravity well required.

[Hannu]

I have combined mining and refinery ship. I do not see point to lift ore to orbit. It is not very massive but it can refuel my interplanetary operations with one trip. Ship on right is a fuel tanker. It have 2 men crew, pilot and engineer. It lands near mining unit and crew connects ship (with KAS connectors). Mining take couple of days but there is unlimited time warp on surface. Then the tanker ascends to orbit and dock to station or large interplanetary ship. This refinery is on Ike but it is practically identical with my Minmus refinery.

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This is my setup.

Fantastic factory. Do you have a contract to replace all fossil fuels on whole planet?

[Acet]

For those of us who don't use MechJeb, is it feasible to land multiple vessels on the same surface spot? I've done it once or twice, but for me it's harder than an orbital rendez-vous.

It is in Minmus since the gravity is so low.

Make sure you set one of the grounded ships as target for the ship that is landing and put the navball in Target mode on final approach. From there it's a bit like a docking manoeuvre with just a few extra details (for example, when your target retrogade marker is exactly at the north pole of the navball, that means you're right on top of it). You can even try and dock with a grounded ship from above by setting your landing ship's just a touch below the speed that would keep it hoovering and then using RCS for final approach (though this is still harder than docking in space).

Also, as somebody else pointed out, while deorbiting, remember that the planet will rotate for the 5-10 minutes that it will take to reach ground level, so don't aim your trajectory to intercept the ground exactly where you intend to land but rather a bit East from it.

[nholzric]

OH OH! Pick me! I have a Minmus mining operation, too!

Right now, 0% efficient. I hope to launch the converter unit sometime this weekend. Also, I don't have enough power to run even one drill. The solar panels were primarily for cooling - thinking the drills will heat up the tanks which will be cooled by the panels, don't know if this is a good design yet, I'm open for suggestions. I plan on launching a power until eventually with MOAR SOLAR PANELS. Also, I plan to have a truck with an orange tank shuttle between the base and a landed orbital shuttle to transfer fuel (and the truck will probably have a fuel cell to help power the base). Neither the power until nor the tanker are designed yet.

Several funny stories.

First, the silver tanks and Twitchy's on the top are just the drop tanks, I'll detach them eventually. But when I was landing the drilling unit the first time I had positioned the engines directly over the tanks - for symmetry. I noticed my mistake when I wasn't getting any acceleration.. and then two tanks exploded... and then the drills started overheating. That episode ended up lithobraking at about 70m/s. The current design still heats the tanks and panels but thankfully Minmus is pretty forgiving in terms of required dV so it made it down intact.

Second, the boosters that launch these assemblies have enough dV to land on their own, it's just everything would be oriented the wrong way and I wouldn't know how to uncouple the payload on the surface. So, the result right now is the mining module launch ended up lithobraking about 1000 units of liquid fuel on Minmus. Will I ever mine that much? On Minmus, maybe, maybe not. But it's for science! (this is my first surface base and I'm so proud!)

Lastly, I originally though I'd land the fuel shuttle rocket on some sort of launch pad assembly with a docking port figuring flying up to a docking port facing up is way easier than flying to a docking port facing sideways. And hey, I'm a bad*ss pilot (in KSP - when no one's looking) so no problem... It obviously it didn't matter too much where I landed the first module. The second module landed all of 600m away from the first. I probably could have gotten closer if I wanted to but the Twitchy's were heating the tanks and I was anxious to set down. But yeah, I'm disabused of the notion that I can land on top of a docking port. Actually, I'm disabused of the notion I *want* to land on top of a docking port - you know I totally could if I wanted to, because I'm awesome.

[cybersol]

And from the KMin L2-analog point

Langrange points are solutions to 3-body physics and KSP uses a 2-body approximation. Ergo, if you put something outside of Minmus SOI, you will just be in orbit of Kerbin and Minmus will have no effect on you. In a lower orbit you will speed away from the planet and in a higher orbit it will speed away from you. So you will likely need a high Minmus orbit.

[Archgeek]

Here's my test rig:

and mostly empty

I've got the panels on a tank between the two big heat sources, so it should cool reasonably well. It's launched with just a bit more than enough delta-v on board to get down to Minmus's surface and start drilling, and is intended to test things like the power draw of the drills and refinery, the heating and efficiency curve of them both with Bill on board and out stretching his legs, and how many fuel cells are needed to drill or refine through the night.

The whole thing's designed to fill itself up on propellants with minimal ore storage, then fill the ore can up because why not, and drag everything up to an orbital fuel depot and process the ore while it's transferring the pre-made fuels. A serious production design will probably have a few LF-only tanks, or possibly a big mk3 tank, since the bulk of craft gassing up will probably be interplanetary NERVA ships.

Efficiency data forthcoming a soon as it gets to work.

[KerikBalm]

Mining rigs don't have OH-ing problems anymore.

This is my Minmus surface base.... not much but everything was delivered by SSTO

Its enough to support operations around Minmus (ie, refuel the small lander). Not shown is the orbiting fuel depot.

That was with 2 of the 4 harvesters on... its power is stable with 3 on, but I find if I turn the 4th on, and then go to the space center, power doesn't become a problem until I switch back to it

The next one will include more solar panels...

I'm still not sure I want to put my large fuel tanker on Minmus... the transfer times are too long, I'm thinking my operation to support LKO will be on Mun, or I'll just use SSTOs from Kerbin, since airbreathing engines are OPd.

[magnemoe]

A heavy tanker is landing at my Minmus base

The 3x2.5 meter stack is base core with the converter and two drills, an research module in back and a 3.75 meter stack with fuel tank and 4 extra drills is an extension for better capacity.

The huge tanker is filled on two minmus days.

My second run with it.

[Goomblah]

My Minmus mining setup looks like this:

Shown are two miners hooked up to the same orange tank; each miner has a converter, four fuel cell arrays, two Gigantor solar panels, four drills, and a large ore tank. Each one can fill up an orange tank in two hours and forty minutes at night; in the day, when the fuel cells don't need to work as hard (and use less of the converted fuel) efficiency increases to about one every 2 hours. Together, the speed is doubled and they can top one off (with the monopropellant tanks, too) in just over an hour, even at night.

Docking is a breeze; I just land the tanks close by and then drive up to the port; with a little fiddling with the landing gear and RCS, I can have them hooked up quickly.

I want to use larger fuel lifters, though; I spend more time docking the tanks than I do filling them up

Edited May 23, 2015 by Goomblah
Math error ;)

[Linear]

Will post some pics of mine after I attempt some Lithodocking with my awful piloting skills!

E: Gauges caused a OOM CTD. Oops.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Linear

[Jesrad]

Langrange points are solutions to 3-body physics and KSP uses a 2-body approximation. Ergo, if you put something outside of Minmus SOI, you will just be in orbit of Kerbin and Minmus will have no effect on you. In a lower orbit you will speed away from the planet and in a higher orbit it will speed away from you. So you will likely need a high Minmus orbit.

Aaaand that's why I say "L2-analog" point and mention using the exact same orbit as Minmus (46400000m altitude from Kerbin sea level) and sitting just outside the little moon's SOI I do not need to orbit Minmus.

I'll go with Hannet's advice and not lift ore up.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Jesrad

[cybersol]

Aaaand that's why I say "L2-analog" point and mention using the exact same orbit as Minmus (46400000m altitude from Kerbin sea level) and sitting just outside the little moon's SOI I do not need to orbit Minmus.

I'll go with Hannet's advice and not lift ore up.

I just wanted to make sure you knew. I am guessing that rendezvous will be a pain and more expensive fuel wise than being inside Minmus SOI, but I look forward to hearing how it goes.

[SkyRender]

No screenshots of it at the moment, but my own Minmus fuel operations are pretty slick. The main mining unit has 4 drills, a converter, plenty of RTGs, and tons of solar panels. It lands at a mining hotspot and basically never moves again. Attached to it is a small automated rover with a 90/110 fuel tank, monoprop tank, and claw. The fuel ferry is basically all business: it's mostly fuel tank, with just a probe, power, engines, docking port, and landing gear out of necessity. The central stack of the ascent stage doubles as an orbital fuel station, and can get out to Minmus with surprisingly large quantities of fuel left. The operation is simple: mining unit extracts ore and converts, auto-rover carries the fuel over to the fuel ferry, fuel ferry takes that fuel up to the fuel station in orbit. Actually filling the station would take ages and ages, but it has the capacity for it since the base launch stage that comprises it has two of the largest fuel tanks in the game for capacity. Also, the lot of this is sent up in a single launch. Because I like efficiency. Also, it gets bonus points in my book for being a 100% Kerbal-free operation.

Edited May 23, 2015 by SkyRender

[Xyphos]

I don't know about efficient, but it works for me.

here it is drilling into Minmus

it's 8-sided symmetrical with 3 kerbodyne tanks on each leg, each "kerbo-can" has 3 gigantor solar panels, RCS ports and inner-mounted fuel cells

due to the lack of size3 SAS wheels, I'm forced to spam size2's on each leg.

The engines are overkill for Minmus but needed to leave Kerbin. I decided to keep the launch-engines instead of discarding them into space

It works great in full light, but requires Fuel Cells at night. I think I've added too many lights, however.

Here it is in the editor, I'm using twin, single-layer onion fuel routing to get it out of Kerbin's atmosphere. The Rockomax cans are ejected just before gravity turning.

Here's a trick I had to learn the hard way: ALWAYS put 1 thermoelectric thingy on your craft to prevent accidental unresponsive bricking.

here's a shot of the top instruments and size1 docking port. I ususally don't use any other sized docking ports so size1 works fine for now, I might launch a sister vessel with a size2 docking port if I ever need it.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Xyphos

[Wetapunga]

Different moon, same principle, Roverdude Mods for added fun and challenge, mostly Freight Transportation Technologies and MKS/OKS

Most of my KSP gameplay is building up an orbital industry and self sustaining colonies so i can launch colonizations missions into the deep solar system and interstellar. I use Roverdudes mods and Extraplanetary launchpads a lot

My mining vessels have become.... ambitious

My current Kerbin system Flagship, StarKlipper-1

Half a million in storage of each resource, a crew of 12 with full lifesupport and manufacturing capability. Twin giant reaction wheels allow her to spin about nose to tail in a mere ten seconds. Orbital spacedock for manufacturing stations and successor ships. Empty she weighs over 1000 tons, and with all her cargo containers full she weighs a whopping ~20,000 tons. She has an orbital logistics port allowing for easy transfers off resources from low gravity planetoids and too other ships.

Her main drives are quad torch engines from roverdude's K+ mod. Burning the incredibly rare Karborundum they give this ship a thrust to weight ratio >1 when fully loaded. Although my Karborundum mining industry has yet too take off (building up for a mission too Eeeloo where deposits have been located) our brave scientists were able to synthase 2000 units of Karborundum at great expense (sample tanks are super expensive, cost me like 5 million dollars) With a mere 200 units the StarKlipper-1 had over 20,000 deltaV empty, enough to cruise too the Mun and establish a mining industry.

Currently awaiting the completion of her successor ship the Star Hauler - 1 that will become the new flagship/station of the Mun industrial complex, when that is complete and the handover made StarKlipper - 1 will receive a fresh shipment of Karborundum and set off too Eeleeo with a full stock of rocket parts too build up the mining industry there. Once we have Karborundum mining in bulk StarKlipper - 1 will have enough Delta V too make direct line intercepts, Hoffman transfers and orbital dynamics will be obsolete!! Straight line too the future!

Before you cry about how good of a computer I have... don't, Star Klipper 1 has only 101 parts

Star Klipper - 1 was assembled at the first orbital manufactory established by SpaceWeta Industries. A kludged together series of modules in mid-kerbin orbit it was sufficient too kick off an industrial revolution in space. Known by the rather dull name of KSS-Station Logistics Hub (I forgot to give it a good name) it has now become obsolete replaced by the purpose built and mobile ship-factories like StarKlipper and Star Hauler; still it is a valuable low orbit research center capable of building satellites for contracts and being a training center for new Kerbalnauts.

Mining operations on the Mun are done using automated mining and storage platforms that link too orbiting stations with logistics drones.

The superheavy miner MK-1 weighs near 1000 tons empty and has 4 heavy duty Karbonite engines allowing it too deorbit and land safely on a deposit. Once landed it fires up an array of Karbonite generators and deploys over 40 high power drilling units too mine ore, minerals, substrate, water and Karbonite at a fantastic rate. Karbonite is used too fuel the logistics drones that ship large bulk quantities of raw material too refineries awaiting in orbit

Here we see StarKlipper - 1 with a recently completed Super Heavy Miner, this new miner will be sent too a high density deposit of substrate and water. The substrate will help fuel food and chemical production in orbit and the water will power a new generation of hydrogen fueled ships. From this view you can see the heavy landing legs and drilling array

And all at a mere 200 parts

[​img]http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/716415927267192321/C4FC2678716F8E14063F0C2ACD6DCBA5BDDE11F5/

From a Kerbals perspective you can see how large these monsters of industry are, each of those containers is 4 meters in diameter

Managed to build up all this in a hardcore career campaign

[Jesrad]

I just wanted to make sure you knew.

No harm in asking

I am guessing that rendezvous will be a pain and more expensive fuel wise than being inside Minmus SOI, but I look forward to hearing how it goes.

Thanks. I expect the rendezvous will be a LOT less painful than within SOI, actually. From Minmus' surface it's a straight up burn from the equator's leading and trailing orbit points. Switch navball to Orbit, aim, shoot until velocity is 243 m/s and the only thing left to do is to just wait until you see the depot for the RCS fine-maneuvering and docking.

I tested the mining feature in KSP yesterday and got the first piece in place: the mining rig is dropped and working in the Flats of Minmus. It's actually already full of ore at the moment, as I need some more science to get the Docking Sr parts and build the tanker and depot:

1 experienced engineer aboard, 1800 ore capacity. That's low I know, I intend to have it mine continuously while docked to the tanker-refinery, so the ore tanks are here only so that it keeps mining while the tanker completes the delivery of freshly refined fuel to the depot and returns.

[Wanderfound]

Sufficiently efficient:

[Vicomt]

Whilst my mining operation may not be as large or well built as some of those monsters, I'm quite proud of it....

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[Jesrad]

My mining operation is go !

As shown above, I already had a mining rig in place on the Flat of Minmus. Now I've launched the tankers an the fuel depot that sits in a L2-analog fashion relative to Kerbin and Minmus.

First I landed a refinery-tanker ship next to the mine:

The rig is on wheels and has a Klaw for universal docking with any tanker model:

In operation: filling the tanker from the mined ore - power capacity is a little too short for operating the drills at the same time as all 4 ISRU processes, but it's OK: the fuel tank is exactly twice the sizze of the ore tank so it wouldn't make a difference.

Transit from Minmus to Depot takes upwards of 243 m/s only: any Vinf on top of Minmus' escape velocity just shortens the trip. With 40 m/s Vinf I get to the depot in 12 days. I'll then need 40 m/s to brake there. It's very simple: transit deltaV = 243+2xVinf. This stays true whichever Flats of Minmus you depart from (plus or minus the sidereal boost of 9 m/s from the little green speck's rotation).

To address the limitations of this Tanker and make up a complete rotation of ships back and forth between the Minmus Mine and the L2 Depot, I am to add 3 more such tankers. I've added one bigger, dubbed the Tanker More, depicted here:

I'm also adding Cislunar Tankers, which are very simple fuel tugs which will bring fuel from the L2 Depot to LKO via a cheap aerocapture. You can see Tanker More refilling from one such, here.

Yup, hauling fuel from Kerbin would cost 3600 m/s, whereas mining and refining the same amount of fuel from Minmus, bringing it to L2 and then dropping it into LKO costs about 500-600 m/s ! The "Develop Cislunar Next" advocacy group's initiative is hereby vindicated

The Tanker More towed its empty Cislunar Tanker back to the L2 Depot and store the remaining fuels:

I then sent the Tanker More to Minmus for a bigger load. This time I aimed a little higher (45 degrees normal-ward from retrograde) and got a 9 day transit for a Vinf of 48 m/s:

Transit from Depot to Minmus is cheaper since some of the initial Vinf counts as braking push against the 243 m/s escape velocity of Minmus. So the rotation is even slightly cheaper than I anticipated.

Tanker More landed at the mine and the rig latched onto one of its "feet". With this bigger design I can run all ISRU processes and all 4 drills at once:

All in all I'm very satified with this setup I can now between 2 and 3 orange-tankfull-worth of fuel in LKO or Minmus-like orbit every 3 ingame weeks, approximately, without any extra launch. And the rotation can be run much faster at some fuel expense. I might not even need to have a full 4-tanker rotation.

[Col_Jessep]

Hmm, I see some similarities to my mining setup:

[Khazar]

This is what I have made recently.

Its orbiting mun at the moment, I want to see If I will be able to land it on Mun, then I will go for minmus. Aside mining ore and converting it to fuel its supposed to finish various contracts as well (mostly built surface outpost/orbital station)

It has 4 mainsails and 18 LV-Ns. It's prototype and I havent attempted any landings yet so It still can turn out to be a huge failure

[problemecium]

Well now that this is sticky I guess I have to chime in.

My Minmus mining operation consists of a dead lander I accidentally broke on arrival (I was able to rescue the Kerbal at least) and a Kerbal who spawned as part of a rescue contract. So in other words I do not have a Minmus mining operation and its efficiency is therefore zero xD

P.S. Come to think of it, perhaps I should start one so that I can fill up the tanks on my soon-to-launch Jool mothership without having to muscle the fuel all the way up from Kerbin...

Edited June 2, 2015 by parameciumkid

[Jesrad]

More tanker action lately:

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Tanker More has fueled up to the brim and launched for the Depot. I departed the wrong way though, and it ended up going outwards from the orbit of Minmus instead of inwards, so I wasted about 25 m/s and a day+half correcting this. I did the entire transit burn off RCS and got intercept in 10 days using about 60% of the gas. So I'll need slightly longer transits if I want to make the return trip off RCS purely. Also on next refueling trip with the Tanker Less I'll test a more direct burn, now that I know where to aim the ship at from the surface. That should shave (err, amputate, rather) several days off the transit and save fuel.

I launched Cislunar Tanker Gamma to LKO, and since I now have a working reusable LKOBus to ferry to and from Kerbin ground, I also plan to add a Cislunar Tanker Delta (with extra crew quarters) for those LKO-MinKL2 crew rotations.

Finally, Cislunar Tanker Alpha sitting at the Depot is refueled, and ready for its return to LKO. I'm guessing it'll cost less than 200 m/s total: 165 m/s for catching an intercept with half of Kerbin's atmosphere, and some spare change for recircularization. I might have to use several aerobraking passes, but I'm pretty confident I can stick to my 600 m/s deltaV objective for the entire fuel hauling circuit.

Wit this, I have nearly everything I need now to start building a complete interplanetary infrastructure. The "Develop Cislunar Next" initiative is vindicated once again

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Hmm, I see some similarities to my mining setup:

You're hauling the drills and the ore tanks with you ? Where do you deposit the fuel ? Try and see what kind of deltaV cost lugging the extra equipment all the way adds, it would be interesting to know

I figured a Minmus-Kerbin L2-analog depot needs to be at least twice the SOI radius from the moon, otherwise approaching and departing ships risk crossing its SOI all the time - and SOI changes are very "costly" in terms of game time.