Flying on 100% Homemade Fuel!

[Cryova]

Hello Everybody!

I was bored, so I began thinking about mining. Then, I got an idea. Would it be possible to extremely cut launch costs by making a system that manufactured and loaded the fuel into your ships while they were on the pad?

The Miner

This craft uses two miners, ore storage, one IRSU, one fuel tank, and a boat load of solar panels with batteries to create a 24/7 non-stop fuel and ore farm. These panels are able to refill the batteries each day, and the batteries last well through the night.

Fuel Transfer Car

This car is built to transfer fuel from the ore miner above to a silo, which is just a mega fuel tank. There the fuel is stored until I launch a new rocket.

Fuel Loading Car

This car is literally the exact same as the Fuel Transfer Car, only this one has a claw elevated with struts to compensate for engines on the rocket and allowing it to load the fuel into the rocket.

Next Step, Loading The Fuel Into The Rocket

Drive the FLC up to your rocket and load the fuel. Be careful of the hill leading up to the launchpad area, and the hill going up to the pad from the crawlerway. Both make you go boom if you don't hit them slowly and carefully (best at an angle.)

Final Step, Launch Your Rocket

Now you must detach your FLC and drive it a little ways away from the launch. Then, switch back to your rocket and enjoy a very inexpensive rocket launch!

*Note - You are free to do any sort of design. The cars, miner, and silo shown here are very small. If you wish to launch bigger scale rockets, feel free to scale these up!

[kStrout]

Not a bad idea, have you calculated how long it would take for it to start saving you money? And also how long does this take, I don't want to have to spend 30 minutes just fueling a rocket. Perhaps if the silo and the Miner were the same vehicle?

[Cryova]

Not a bad idea, have you calculated how long it would take for it to start saving you money? And also how long does this take, I don't want to have to spend 30 minutes just fueling a rocket. Perhaps if the silo and the Miner were the same vehicle?

I do admit, the system shown above is quite drawn out with very unnecessary steps. Heck, it would technically be possible to mix all three ships into one.

As for savings, I haven't calculated that quite yet.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

100% Moonshine, I love it

[regex]

Yeah, I would never do this myself, looks like an exercise in boredom. Most ISRU activities are like that. Kudos, though, looks like you enjoyed it, at least.

[Rath]

*Pssst* Fuel is 1% of the cost of a real rocket launch and in KSP it is like 5%-7% so, no real big savings here.

[KerbMav]

Brings up the question: How close to the launchpad can you park (with or without a probe core) a tanker or build a fueling station without it getting deleted from the automatic cleaning of the area before each launch?

[magnemoe]

Brings up the question: How close to the launchpad can you park (with or without a probe core) a tanker or build a fueling station without it getting deleted from the automatic cleaning of the area before each launch?

You see an raised area who extend out to the rails from VAB, this is the clearing area, so you will be 100 meter or something away.

If you have cores it will be recovered.

Now if you have KAS it possible to use an KAS hub.

a small rover with kas winces and connectors.

And yes I would combine mining and storage in one unit, then used kas or an fuel rover with claw to transport fuel to rocket.

ISRU works then away so it will probably be filled up to next launch unless you launch many large rockets in short order.

[Borsek]

Or you can straight drill the launchpad for fuel with an orange tank car. But glad you had fun designing a system around it, wouldn't be KSP if it wasn't about overdesigning simple actions. Reminds me of my 10 launches of a base to minmus. It became self-sufficient (MKS/OKS mod), and I had to scan out the perfect spot for the base, one that had all resources available. Also, the base had no real purpose

[Blue_J]

If the goal is saving money, a much quicker and more painless system would be to build the miner and tanker as one unit, drive to a mining site right off the runway, fill the tank, then just drive to the runway and sell the whole thing. Selling a craft from the runway gives you 100% recovery price on both the fuel and the parts, so if you then build your rocket normally and put it fully fueled on the pad, the price you pay for the fuel is offset by the price of the fuel you just sold.

This may break the immersion a little bit, but financially it's the same as mining the fuel, driving it over to the pad, docking with the rocket and transferring fuel. Not entirely sure the cost is worth it, as fuel is pretty cheap.

(Now, finding out how much money you could net using a giant rig with dozens of drills and a few Mk3 fuselages might be an interesting exercise)

Edited October 14, 2015 by Blue_J

[Cryova]

If the goal is saving money, a much quicker and more painless system would be to build the miner and tanker as one unit, drive to a mining site right off the runway, fill the tank, then just drive to the runway and sell the whole thing. Selling a craft from the runway gives you 100% recovery price on both the fuel and the parts, so if you then build your rocket normally and put it fully fueled on the pad, the price you pay for the fuel is offset by the price of the fuel you just sold.

This may break the immersion a little bit, but financially it's the same as mining the fuel, driving it over to the pad, docking with the rocket and transferring fuel. Not entirely sure the cost is worth it, as fuel is pretty cheap.

(Now, finding out how much money you could net using a giant rig with dozens of drills and a few Mk3 fuselages might be an interesting exercise)

That's kinda cool! I never thought of that!

I'll try a Mk3 miner recovery today and see how much money I make.

[Blue_J]

That's kinda cool! I never thought of that!

I'll try a Mk3 miner recovery today and see how much money I make.

Well, a quick check says that a Mk3 Rocket Fuel Fuselage Long carries 4590 funds worth of fuel+oxidizer, so that's the kind of scale you're dealing with. Your profit is going to be a pretty small fraction of the cost of your drilling rig, but you could in theory turn a profit that way. Whether or not it's worth it is up to you...

[322997am]

But when you are dealing with tens of thousands of dollars worth of fuel it might be worth it.

[sardia]

But when you are dealing with tens of thousands of dollars worth of fuel it might be worth it.

It's not worthy it. It's like 1000$ per thousand fuel. And only liquid fuel is worthy. Ore,oxidizer and mono are almost worthless.

[Guest]

Probably you could build your rocket upon a refinery + drill, mine the ore on the launchpad, fill your tanks and start your rocket (probably with custom launch clamps so the exhaust doesn´t damage the refinery). When in orbit you switch back to the refiney and recover it for 100% value. No costs for the refining, you just need to timewarp until your full (probably make EC with fuel cells using the refined ore. I tried it with 4 drills + 1 refinery once and I made ore at no EC cost, also at night. And you can have as many drills/refineries/fuel cells as you want given you have enough money at the start).

Only problem would be if there is ore on the launchpad...

[Rainbowtrout]

This is really interesting. How much does it save on average?

[Arugela]

I been working on this. It never dawned on me to do it for money saving. I thought of the elements for extended flight and tested mining on the launchpad(which works btw.). But I completely didn't think to lower cost with it. Mostly because I use only sandbox. I'll have to finally add mining stuff to my boosters and try it out and see how much it lowers cost. It's a good way to get lowered advertised costs for a mining vessel which is even better stat wise potentially especially as it is almost all fuel. I'll report back when I'm done with one in orbit for another ship and see what the cost difference is. I won't be surprised if it is alot. It cost at least 10 million with boosters to get into orbit initially. And it is a pure mining vessel. Laggy as heck though.

BTW this thing takes several days on the launchpad to fuel up without the boosters. It may take several weeks and repititions to fill the boosters. But if cost is an issue it could be worth it. I wanted to do this anyway to extend operational range for rare missions like getting around kerbal. Land with the boosters mine from minmus or other closer targets and then set up a mining base... Or even more extreme(maybe) a one shot attempt at Eve and back if it's possible. Or Moho more realistically. I wonder if you can mine the sun. That would be a cool possibly unthought of possibility. I doubt the drills would work that way though! ><

You could always mine fill with fuel/ore and see if it gives you cash income... I think others said this but I'll check that also. Profitability on the launchpad could be cool. You could even design a vessel just for it.

Edited October 15, 2015 by Arugela

[oglommi]

This is really interesting. How much does it save on average?

No it's not, cash is so cheap in KSP this is just wasting time unless you enyoing drilling fuel at the space center.

[Arugela]

I've found so far that resources are bought in the VAB/SPH for: (unless I calculated wrong)

LF: 0.8 per unit

OX: 0.18036.. per unit Approx.

Ore: 0.02 per unit

MP: 1.2 per unit

Monopropellant and possibly Liquid fuel are your value resources. Just have to consider time and effort. If that even matters on the runway in a breathable atmosphere. Could be a good way to make cash though. If time is a matter find a good mining spot and fly a ship to collect it very so often. Or just do it on the runway. So, unless the sell back prices are different on recovery....

If people don't know the weights also:

LF: 0.005 per unit

OX: 0.005 per unit

Ore: 0.01 per unit

MP: 0.004 per unit

So MP wins in both categories for sellable end products from mining. Unless the MP containers are somehow too heavy or expensive enough to counter. Which, again, won't matter on the runway/launchpad.

So if you can mine and fill 833,333 MP in one launch on the runway you can possibly net 1,000,000 money from a quick cheap launchpad mine!

You could easily make minig vessels that just hit the launchpad weight limit while leveling and try to get as much MP to help cover costs in the game.

Edit: My really big space ship is only saving about 1million in credits for a 10 million dollar ship. Not worth it unless it is for extending operations. It would be more efficient to make a specific money making vessel for mining on the pad. I wonder how much you could make per mining operation on the pad at each level. Maybe it would be a good way to make money and level pilots. You could put on a science bay and do science while you mine or something. And see how much xp you get per pilot.

Edited October 16, 2015 by Arugela