ISRU at the KSP to save money?

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I haven't started a career game in 1.0 yet, and I was wondering if anyone has tried or thought of this:

Setting up ISRU operations at the KSP, then deliberately defueling all of your ships in the VAB, and then filling them up with “free†fuel from the ISRU on the pad.

Would that save enough money to be worth it?

Or would the ISR operation costs so much, and be so much more work that I shouldn’t bother?

[More Boosters]

ISRU operation is free. You just pay for building the thing and generating the power. As for ferrying fuel it might save you some trouble to just fill up your tanker and then recover it at the airfield for a 100% return. could be tricky to ferry it all the way to your rockets.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

ISRU operation is free. You just pay for building the thing and generating the power. As for ferrying fuel it might save you some trouble to just fill up your tanker and then recover it at the airfield for a 100% return. could be tricky to ferry it all the way to your rockets.

THAT wouldn't just SAVE money it would MAKE money! (you could become and oil Barron, pay for your space program with profits from fuel mining?)

fueling on the pad would be very realistic.

[More Boosters]

THAT wouldn't just SAVE money it would MAKE money! (you could become and oil Barron, pay for your space program with profits from fuel mining?)

fueling on the pad would be very realistic.

Well it's a single player game, you do as you want. There's no ore at the pads so you need to go look out near KSC though.

[Laie]

Would that save enough money to be worth it?

Or would the ISR operation costs so much, and be so much more work that I shouldn’t bother?

True but useless answer: as it doesn't incur any running costs, ISRU will eventually break even no matter what.

On my first 1.x career, I was lucky enough to have a pretty decent ore concentration near KSP. Using a tanker and transferring the fuel is a lot of busywork; it's much less hassle if you attach the ISRU parts to the launch clamps or as a zero-th stage of the vessel. Clamps even provide electricity, day in day out... ultimately I abandoned all of that, it just wasn't worth the time.

[Terwin]

You also have increased launch lag for all the additional parts near the lauching vessel.

I have, however found that I can save quite a bit of time using the UKS logistics module coupled with a refinery, lots of drills, and large fuel tanks(with a power supply).

This lets me refuel any ship in orbit of Kerbin at a rate of ~ 9K units of fuel+oxidizer(or 4.5K ore) twice per day(with a 7 hour delivery delay). I just have it set up ~3km from KSC

Works great for those times I had a poor launch or underestimated my fuel needs. I also built an automated refueling station for use on either Ike or Gilly depending on which one is easier to get to after I refuel on Minmus(costs ~1M funds each, plus another half mil to get it to LKO, so it may take a while for me to get enough of them to be able to forego ISRU on my main ships, but it should greatly improve the utility of my probes.)

(of course starting over in 1.0.5 will delay that even further...)

[r_rolo1]

Now that we have something far more close of boats than previously, you can even mine somewhere else and transport it to KSC via ore/fuel tanker. KSC is even at almost sea level, so it would not even be hard to set that. Hum... I think I gave myself a idea

[Alshain]

Seems to me that running a quick contract would be faster and easier than all of this.

[r_rolo1]

Seems to me that running a quick contract would be faster and easier than all of this.

Probably true. But, besides the fact that some people would prefer doing things that way, there is also the fact that, unlike the misleading adverstisement in the tier 3 of the Mission Control building, we don't get unlimited contracts and it is not exactly uncommon to have weeks or months in between fulfilling contracts in late game. In those conditions , this might be cheaper and faster than waiting for one of your contracts to finish to get a opening for another one

[Guest]

How would I set up a new depletable resource? Like gold, that I could mine and return for a profit. I know how to set up a resource, I just don't know how to make it depletable. I don't want an infinite supply of gold, but I would like to mine a location for a period of time and then be forced to move on. And, maybe as a future project, set it up so that the price of gold goes up with the decrease in supply, making it more and more attractive to mine gold on other planets and moons.

[Highguard]

What and where is 'the KSP'? ^^

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

what and where is 'the ksp'? ^^

lol

[Joonatan1998]

I think buying and refining ore might more profitable than mining it at KSC.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I think buying and refining ore might more profitable than mining it at KSC.

can you DO that?

[Wild Cobra]

I haven't started a career game in 1.0 yet, and I was wondering if anyone has tried or thought of this:

Setting up ISRU operations at the KSP, then deliberately defueling all of your ships in the VAB, and then filling them up with “free†fuel from the ISRU on the pad.

Would that save enough money to be worth it?

Or would the ISR operation costs so much, and be so much more work that I shouldn’t bother?

LOL...

Before I launched my entry for the "Mun Rocked Challenge," I tested my lander on the runway, deployed the drills, and mined ore.

Never thought of trying to save money though. It was just a test.

[panzer1b]

i dont play acreer but fuel costs ALOT more then ore. Fill alot of ore tanks with fuel, and spam converters to create ALOT OF FREE MONEY!

Or, just place alot of empty fuel tanks, alot of converters, alot of drills, and spam timewarp till full, then ofc, recover it and u can (with enough patience) get infinite funds. Myself, if im gonna bother, theres the alt-f12 menu to add funds, but with no waiting period on delivery.

I gotta try career again sometime, but for now its kinda pointless since there are no contracts that involve: go destroy a hostile base, or defend a station under attack by pirates, rescue hostages, ect. Its kerbal military program for me!

[AbacusWizard]

can you DO that?

Yes; the ore tanks are empty by default but that's tweakable in the Vehicle Assembly Building. Right-click the ore tanks and fill 'em up all you want.

So! If you don't like contracts, you are welcome to play Kerbal Oil Refinery Program.

Of course, if you don't like contracts, you are also welcome to play Kerbal Edit Your Own Save File Program.

[Hotaru]

unlike the misleading adverstisement in the tier 3 of the Mission Control building, we don't get unlimited contracts and it is not exactly uncommon to have weeks or months in between fulfilling contracts in late game.

This can be fixed by changing the line "AverageAvailableContracts" (line 8) in GameData/Squad/Contracts/contracts.cfg. Default 10 yields about 14-15 contracts going at once, increasing it allows you to have more.

Personally I think it would be cool if ore from Kerbin was basically worthless, but ore brought back from elsewhere was worth more, so you could mine other planets for a profit (I think I read where in real life, a metallic asteroid, mined slow so as not to raise prices, would be worth a few trillion dollars in rare metals). Not sure how that could actually be implemented, but doesn't sound impossible.

[SgtSomeone]

I saw a suggestion a while back that you could edit the parts config file for the launch clamps, and enable fuel flow as well as electricity. You could justify it because a) that's how real rockets perform and You could do ISRU legally and accomplish the same thing; this just cuts out the busy work.

The only slightly sketchy thing is that if you launch empty, fill it up, and then recover you'll have a net profit. But hey it's a single player game. If you're that desperate for money, fire away!

[RoverDude]

How would I set up a new depletable resource? Like gold, that I could mine and return for a profit. I know how to set up a resource, I just don't know how to make it depletable. I don't want an infinite supply of gold, but I would like to mine a location for a period of time and then be forced to move on. And, maybe as a future project, set it up so that the price of gold goes up with the decrease in supply, making it more and more attractive to mine gold on other planets and moons.

Depletion is tied to the drills not to the resource. So you could add gold digging to the stock drill via MM, and set a depletion rate, then have gold as a resource. That being said, gold is pretty worthless as far as space minerals go

[r_rolo1]

This can be fixed by changing the line "AverageAvailableContracts" (line 8) in GameData/Squad/Contracts/contracts.cfg. Default 10 yields about 14-15 contracts going at once, increasing it allows you to have more.

Well, no matter how high the number you put there, the number of contracts will never be truly unlimited I have my own opinion about this issue, but that is quite a tangent to the subject of this thread

Personally I think it would be cool if ore from Kerbin was basically worthless, but ore brought back from elsewhere was worth more, so you could mine other planets for a profit (I think I read where in real life, a metallic asteroid, mined slow so as not to raise prices, would be worth a few trillion dollars in rare metals). Not sure how that could actually be implemented, but doesn't sound impossible.

That would actually be a good idea, but I doubt that the stock game will every diferentiate stuff by their origin ( mods OTOH ... )

[Guest]

Depletion is tied to the drills not to the resource. So you could add gold digging to the stock drill via MM, and set a depletion rate, then have gold as a resource. That being said, gold is pretty worthless as far as space minerals go

Ok, awesome! and thanks. The drills are the one place I haven't looked.

[Guest]

Well, I have been searching for some time now, and I have no clue as to how to set a depletion rate for a stock drill. Could use some help.

[Wjolcz]

Drilling for fuel around KSC is a meh for me. Not my kind of thing. And it would take a lot of time get the monies back.

An interplanetary Xenon-based industry on the other hand...

E: Or any other valuable resource that can be gathered from somewhere else than Kerbin. I really want to build my own Nostromo and do some space business.

Edited November 10, 2015 by Veeltch

[percyPrune]

A better way to make money is to process monoprop and sell it back to KSP. This is a self-sustaining rig I had in 1.0.2:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29533-What-did-you-do-in-KSP-today?p=2006360&viewfull=1#post2006360

I used to leave it running in the background and every so often launch an empty tanker, fill up and recover it from the runway. Paid for itself and produced a regular income.