ISRU converter - in orbit or on lander?

[jkool702]

Do you all prefer to leave the ISRU converter in orbit on the main ship / station, or do you like to put it on the lander / mining ship?

I've tried it both ways, and I kind of think I like it better on the lander. Yes it adds more weight, but it lets you top off your tanks on the surface. This gives you more fuel to make orbit again, and lets you air on the side of caution with your suicide burns (since fuel efficiency on the way down is no longer an issue unless you actually run out of fuel before you hit the ground). Granted I have a tendency to make large / heavy landers, so adding an ISRU doesn't add that much weight to the craft. It also makes doing several missions on a planet surface with a single lander possibly, since you can fill up the tanks at each surface stop.

Anyways what do you all prefer and why?

[LittleBlueGaming]

Lander. To me it makes more sense, just in the feeling of the game, to convert raw materials before transport. Also, landing things like this is just fun.

[katateochi]

I tend to run conversion on the ground assuming the converter and drills stay on the ground while you ferry the refined fuel up to orbit in a separate craft.

The reason being that if you are transporting ore up to orbit you need ore tanks and fuel tanks so you need to work out how much fuel is needed to lift the ore (and then return to the surface) and then select fuel tanks that provide slightly more than what you require (for error margin). So a) if you do an inefficient launch to orbit and use up your available fuel then you're stranded, or if you do a very efficient launch then you've carried extra fuel with you that you didn't need. So by converting on the ground and ferrying up refined fuel, the transport ship only needs regular fuel tanks and whatever you don't use in the ascent (plus your known levels required for descent + landing) can be stored in your orbital fuel station. If you do a very efficient launch then that's more profit, but if you mess things up you've still got tons of fuel (you just cut into your profit a bit).

Central lander has converter and drills and a couple small ore tanks, lander on the left is the fuel transporter (which lands and then a rover drives under it, docks and then moves it to dock with the miner). The set of ore tanks on the right was added as an after thought to extend the miners ore capacity and doesn't move once attached.

[SAI Peregrinus]

Station. I use EPL and the USI mods, so I've got several other types of resources to mine/convert. My lander can take one of several drill sections, and one of several tank segments to match the drill type. Bringing all the converters would be very heavy. As in about 30 tonnes. Sticking all that on a lander instead of leaving it on the EPL station/refueling depot would be foolish. But that's also because I move around to mine different things at different times. If I were simply setting up mining bases I'd ferry finished or intermediate products.

Edit: I use Karbonite engines, and have a Karbonite drill. So I can always refuel the lander itself, that doesn't take a converter.

Edited June 20, 2015 by SAI Peregrinus

[MaverickSawyer]

I've got ideas for both, depending on the situation. Minmus? Lander, without a doubt. Gilly or Bop? Ehhh... might do an orbital one.

[jkool702]

I've got ideas for both, depending on the situation. Minmus? Lander, without a doubt. Gilly or Bop? Ehhh... might do an orbital one.

Thats funny, my minimus station is the one where the ISRU in orbit. My lander has A LOT of ore capacity tho (21k) so it works out pretty well. My interplanetary lander has the ISRU on the lander tho which has helped out a ton for completing contracts from the surface of planets

Edited June 20, 2015 by jkool702

[Xannari Ferrows]

I prefer mobile bases, all because of one reason: It's the only thing I've built with it... But it works! It's huge as well. Unfortunately I can't get it to places like Tylo or Eve, but it's nothing a bit of... Ground assembly​ couldn't fix.

[Caelib]

There's not enough utility in stock right now to make ground-based mining operations worthwhile. Minmus is half-way decent for mining with an orbital converter and fuel reserve, but asteroids is really the best option for fuel stations.

[tater]

Orbital should not possibly be cost (dv) effective. The conversion rate should make it a net loss to move raw materials around, ever.

[Alshain]

Neither.

[AbacusWizard]

I don't like having it on the lander because an extra four tonnes (I think it's four tonnes?) can make a big difference... but that doesn't mean it has to be in orbit. My current setup is a large wheeled mine/refinery--I call it the Mobile Ore Combine--that extracts ore AND refines it into fuel, to be pumped directly into a docked surface-to-orbit tanker. That way the tanker itself doesn't have to have any converters or drills--just fuel tanks, engines, and landing gear.

(The central column sticking up out of the Mobile Ore Combine is an engineering bay--living quarters for two engineers to keep the drills running smoothly. It can detach and fly, or jet around the flats on wheels--useful for picking up waypoint contracts nearby, and originally useful for scouting out a good ore deposit for mining.)

[KerikBalm]

It depends on the size of the lander, and the dV needed to land.

Once you need more than 4 tons of fuel for the ascent, you should have the converter directly on the lander... or have a surface converter and an orbital converter.

[Kaos]

I find it highly unrealistic that ore can be converted into fuel with 100% mass efficiency. I'd rather like the mass efficiency to be somewhere around 10%. Hence, for role-play reasons I always put my converter into the lander (for direct missions) or into a ground base (when building infrastructure).

[Caelib]

I find it highly unrealistic that ore can be converted into fuel with 100% mass efficiency. I'd rather like the mass efficiency to be somewhere around 10%. Hence, for role-play reasons I always put my converter into the lander (for direct missions) or into a ground base (when building infrastructure).

Just remember, it's a game first and realistic second With your suggestion, I doubt anyone would use it because even in its current form, gathering fuel is very chore-like given the sheer cost and time of getting a mining operation setup in the first place.

[tater]

Using the "it's a game" rationale, why not just hyper edit to orbit, it's a chore, after all.

For moonlike bodies (no ice), you should get almost entirely O2, which is ~40% of the regolith (oxides). For atmospheres, etc, you can get O2, and C, but H will depend on the location.

[Camaron]

Why rendezvous with the station when you can just land the station?

(And yes, I understand that the following craft is a pre-liquid-fuel-LVN's Kethane ship.)

Grabbed straight from an older post

This one, too.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Camaron

[mikegarrison]

I like building a permanent mining base on Minmus. Minmus is so easy to land on that even my interplanetary ships can do it. They land, an engineer hooks a KAS line to them, they fill up with fuel, and they leave. While the ship is on its mission, the mining base can be refilling its tanks in the background.

It avoids futzing around with docking, although it does require futzing around with KAS fueling lines.

[RidingTheFlow]

Why bother ferrying at all? I just make autonomous tug ship, which when it runs low on fuel, lands on the nearest moon, refuels, then docks back with payload "trailer" (or whatever its towing). "Alien" anyone?

Making it able to aerobrake was the trickiest part.

BTW I don't think building mining bases on ground would be effective, since I've noticed that resources in given local surface area deplete relatively fast.

Edited June 22, 2015 by RidingTheFlow

[cephalo]

BTW I don't think building mining bases on ground would be effective, since I've noticed that resources in given local surface area deplete relatively fast.

Hey, is this true? I did not know that. It's not documented on the wiki in any case.

[RidingTheFlow]

I was doing refuel on Gilly using one "flag" resource-rich site as reference and after ~two times of full tanks drill said "resources depleted" and I've noticed on map massive "gap" in resource density appeared around landing site. I roughly estimate radius of this "depleted area" was tens of kilometers (looks like its size of one "pixel" on planetary resource grid).

Not sure if resources "respawn" - if not, eventually it would technically be possible to mine entire planets (or at least smaller asteroid-like moons) dry, which sounds a bit silly really.

Edited June 22, 2015 by RidingTheFlow

[AbacusWizard]

Are you using a mod? I've been doing a fair bit of mining in one spot on Minmus and haven't noticed any depletion of ore.

[RidingTheFlow]

No, completely stock (or maybe not completely - I use stock module bugfix mod, but I don't think it affects mining). Maybe it has scale to it based to planet size and too overblown for dwarf moons like Gilly or Ike.

[TheSoutherner]

I think in a larger sense, mining a planet dry wouldn't be accurate, but I do think resource depletion is a good idea. I think of it like oil on earth: after a while, you've tapped all the easily accessible resources, and you hit a point where you expend more resources than you get in return. After a region is depleted, it's probably easier to move shop than it is to keep mining for little to no return.

On that note, what I use is effectively a series of terrestrial tankers for ore extraction, which move to ore rich sites and then return to a central refining base, which ships refined fuel (via tanker-landers) to an orbital refueling station. Granted, it's not the most effective method in terms of launched mass, but it works pretty well for me since I don't need to burn any fuel to extract/refine ore once the base is in place, and it prevents lugging the ISRU around on rovers or on landers. It's also pretty nice because I only have to worry about putting the refining base under the path of the orbital station, which is a lot easier (in my opinion) than frequent normal/antinormal burns to visit ore-rich sites with landers.

[Sharpy]

A permanent mining station - surface, with fuel trucks to ferry the product.

If I'm going to mine, say, Ike or Gilly, or Pol, I'll leave the ISRU with the main craft and fetch the ore. Less bother with the right landing spot, less mass to dock.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Sharpy

[Evanitis]

"resources depleted"

I got the exact same message on Minmus when mining on the same spot fo a while. The displayed ore density and mining times stayed the same as before. I use no related mods - maybe it's the stock bugfix module that made depletion actually happen.

BTW I prefer to refine in orbit, as I can just move the whole mining operation on a whim when I lack the mood or funds to launch a brand new one.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Evanitis