ISRU ideas

[jwbrase]

I have two interesting ISRU ideas: One for Dres and one for Eve.

The Dres idea is fairly straightforward: Have a special ISRU resource that Xenon can be extracted from, available only on Dres. This would allow players to get a fairly cheap source of Xenon by mining Dres, which would encourage exploration of a planet that might otherwise be considered out of the way.

The Eve idea is twofold:

First, since Eve's ocean biome is called the "Explodium Sea", have liquid fuel be an ISRU resource that can be directly and quickly collected by craft splashed down on Eve without any intermediate processing.

Secondly, have jet engines work on Eve, but instead of using atmospheric oxygen and onboard fuel, have them use atmospheric fuel and onboard oxidizer on Eve. Potentially one could also have a "fuel condenser" part that used copious amounts of electricity to extract liquid fuel from air gathered through intakes on Eve, to allow craft landed inland on Eve to also extract liquid fuel, although more slowly than craft landed in the ocean and with much steeper power requirements.

[RidingTheFlow]

For xenon factory to be useful, in first place some uses are needed for large amount of xenon - larger engines and tanks.

Using electricity to extract fuel for jet engine is very roundabout. Much better is just to make electric propfan

[FlyingPete]

The Dres idea is fairly straightforward: Have a special ISRU resource that Xenon can be extracted from, available only on Dres. This would allow players to get a fairly cheap source of Xenon by mining Dres, which would encourage exploration of a planet that might otherwise be considered out of the way.

Remember though that once you can obtain fuel in orbit, there's less benefit to the ion engines- just have more fuel tanks that you launch empty.

There was originally a much more convoluted resource system planned, some of which can be recognised in the current system. I'd definitely like to see the option to harvest the oceans on Laythe or Eve- particularly if Eve's oceans can yield propellium directly.

Secondly, have jet engines work on Eve, but instead of using atmospheric oxygen and onboard fuel, have them use atmospheric fuel and onboard oxidizer on Eve.

I like this idea. Fundamentally there's no difference between supplying oxidiser in a reducing atmosphere or supplying fuel in an oxidising atmosphere. You could have a spacecraft that dips into the atmosphere and flies around without landing, using jet engines.

The same engines could be made to work in Jool's atmosphere too for further exploration there.

[Wjolcz]

I still think Xenon should be mineable using ISRU. In my opinion it would be a great way to obtain cash if you consider the contracts silly.

Still waiting for the air intakes to have ISRU uses. Maybe Xenon could be obtained from air on some bodies like Laythe, Eve or Jool?

I don't care about oceans.

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

I was really disappointed when instead of that rescoure flow diagram, we got only ore. I hope that the current system is just a transition. Being able to produce rescoures much more efficiently on specific bodies is necessary, and for dres... That's the only planet I haven't visited, and that I won't, because I have little time, while it's a really uninteresting, black Mün. It should definitely be made more useful. Intake air from eve? Not for ocean-less areas, but for diving from orbit! Even if you could extract pure fuel from eve's oceans, you would have a hard time returning it, and it would be more efficient to bring it from Kerbin. The mentioned jet? Wouldn't that be nearly as efficient as rocket motors? Suddenly I had a bold idea to make eve's oceans more remunerative: How about being able to extract a really efficient super-fuel from there, that's much better than the LFO mix, and wich can't be found at kerbin?

[Grumman]

I have two interesting ISRU ideas: One for Dres and one for Eve.

The Dres idea is fairly straightforward: Have a special ISRU resource that Xenon can be extracted from, available only on Dres. This would allow players to get a fairly cheap source of Xenon by mining Dres, which would encourage exploration of a planet that might otherwise be considered out of the way.

I dislike this idea. I would much prefer to be able to harvest Xenon from Jool's atmosphere - a cool idea in a cool location - rather than deliberately putting it somewhere that nobody likes going.

[Slam_Jones]

Xenon is very much minable... if you don't mind mods or .cfg editing. I believe the Near Future suite of mods adds the ability to your ISRU to do as such (along with the other fuel types).

[Joonatan1998]

+1 for the Dres idea.

Having mineable xenon everywhere would be broken, but this could make dres a bit more interesting.

I think the ISRU system really needs another resource, it is clearly designed for more than one.

2 would make it look much more polished.