The advantages of a mining operation

[Clear Air Turbulence]

N00b here, sandbox mode.

So I have spent a couple of months learning to launch, land, dock. I have a couple of space stations in orbit and successfully managed to land a rover on Mun. So far so good

What I need now is whether I should commit major resources towards building a mining operation on Mun/Minmus. I understand that this could be a great way of getting a lot of fuel together that can be used for further interplanetary exploration, essentially allowing me to avoid the Kerbin gravity well for now & explore other, more exciting gravity wells like Eve's :cool:

But is the game worth the candle? I can now fairly routinely heft large orange tanks into high Kerbin orbit. What will a mining operation give me that Uncle Jeb's Orbital Fuel Depot can't? Your advice will be appreciated!

[Taki117]

It's Mainly used for refueling when you are already interplanetary. Inside the kerbin system it's not really of much use, but if you get to Duna, or even the Joolian system, it can really save your mission.

[Venusgate]

In sandbox mode, nothing but toys to play with.
In career mode, each only of those orange tanks can cost an arm and a leg to get up there, where the mining op will just cost everything below the torso once.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

LOL, I hear you. I am happy with my toys for now. I am just learning how to fly, land and build.

I think buiding a mining station on Mun or Minmus is probably good practice.

When I am ready to switch to 1.0.5 I will start a new game (at least in science mode) & do things the (slightly) harder way :)

[jarmund]

I have a fairly huge mining op on Minimus that fills up 7 Kerbodyne 14400 tanks and then lifts it into low Minimus orbit awaiting customers. Some of my larger interplanetary expeditions stop via Minimus for a refuel before heading off.
It was originally intended to only be a small convenience for my Jool5 expedition, so that I didn't have to launch all that fuel into orbit, but ended up being vital to the entire thing as my Tylo lander was based around the same platform (only scaled down a lot) - Land on Tylo, using 95% of the onoard fuel, then sit and mine to refill the tanks before going back to the mothership.

[eddiew]

Refuelling around Minmus is the classic scenario, since it's so easy to lift off and exit Kerbin's SoI from there.

Far as I know it's totally viable to build a single-stage craft that will get to Minmus orbit. Top it up there and you've got upwards of 5000m/s in the tank - anything but Moho is your oyster! :)

[FancyMouse]

Scenarios that I use:
1. Single mission case, you land a rocket empty, refuel on surface, then lift off. It can save up to thousands of delta V, which due to the nature of delta V, can save you a lot of mass
2. Some explorer hopper/plane out on a planet. I want it to use it in the long run - so I set up a base with drills and ISRU, vessel refuel at the base before next mission, and this repeats unlimited number of times.

[Octa]

I once built a fuel station in a 250km orbit (sandbox, just because to see if i can). I imagined to set up a similar station in career mode with an ISRU and a vessel that drills and delivers ore from minmus. For larger interplanetary missions, i'd launch the payload with empty tanks and refuel them at the station before leaving kerbin. Worth a try or uttlery inefficient? How does it look on other celestial bodies (Ike/Duna or Eve/Gilly)?

[Zophos]

I find it most useful for interplanetary missions, as noted above. Particularly missions where you plan to take-off-and-land many times. For example, my current Duna mission has strip-mined the science from all biomes on Ike and all but one on Duna (hitting the Craters biome, it turns out, is tricky). I arrived with just enough fuel to capture the mothership and land a miner on Ike --- since then I've just been refilling the mothership tank periodically as the science lander sips at it. Once I'm finished, I'll top off the mothership again and burn for home.

[panzer1b]

Personally i use them more for roleplay and to keep fleets topped up with fuel. The main thing ive started doing is assembling massive orbital docks where i store ore on them. Then when i get enough ore to have the dry mass of a new ship i want to have built at said dock, i jettision the ore and hyperedit said ship to the spot. I know there are mods that let you build in orbit/other planets, but i hate their complexity and the fact that i then need to drag alot of extra parts around. What id do for a mod like the one that lets you build in orbit, but where it ONLY requires ore and converts said ore directly into a ship.

Then there is always the whole fuel supply depo on other planets. With the new IRSU, nolonger do i have to drag a 500t fuel barge to the jool system just to keep my fleet stationed at jool in check. For mun/minmus this is moot (especially if you play sandbox/science, or career with excessive money), but anything farther out ive actually had better results using a medium to small scale irsu operation, and then have a heavy lifter that goes to orbit with alot of fuel, and delivers to whatever vessels need it, then returns to the actual mine (which i usually leave on the ground as dragging ~10 tons of IRSU gear is not exactly very practical specially since i dont need to use it in the air. The IRSU also has wheels onboard and a claw so i can move it as needed and connect to the fuel barge, which may or may not have landed very close to teh IRSU.

[BenCushwa]

I've generally built three kinds of Kerbaled missions: minimalist, mothership + lander(s), and large "all-in-one" ships akin to mobile space stations that can only ever hope to land on vacuum bodies without exploding. (I need to get around to posting some pics, but I just joined the forums yesterday....)

For the last kind, I include mining gear as part of the ship and just take it with me wherever I go. This means that once I get a ship off of Kerbin and to, say, Minmus, I can fly without any practical limits to any airless body in the solar system and never have to rendezvous to refuel. I just land, mine/refuel, and move on. I did this once in career mode after having accepted several "build a station/outpost around/on body X", and fulfilled all of the contracts on one mission. Quite handy. Just make sure you include a resource scanner.

As for building mining stations and refueling other missions there, it can certainly work although I don't personally have much experience with it. I imagine that a mining/refueling base on the surface of Minmus would make for an amazing jumping off point, so long as all of your ships can land and dock with said base on the surface. Cupcake has some wonderful examples of setups like these. Of course, this depends on the size of the ships you're refueling. For very large ships, some sort of orbital transfer may work better.

Short version: yes, having access to a mining/refueling operation is definitely worth it if you set it up properly. Edited November 18, 2015 by BenCushwa

[Pecan]

[quote name='Clear Air Turbulence']...I think buiding a mining station on Mun or Minmus is probably good practice...[/QUOTE]

I don't.
* base components are a right pain in the **** to dock together unless you're using KIS/KAS, so what you'll be learning is how to use a mod for game-mechanics that will probably change anyway.
* making a one-piece miner to avoid the above is ok, but more work than just launching from Kerbin.
* Minmus orbit is a lousy place to park waiting for interplanetary transfer windows. If you do mine there, bring the fuel somewhere with a shorter orbital period.
* for most interplanetary you don't actually need that much fuel anyway, unless you are over-building. If you want to do that, fine, but if you want to learn to build efficiently then build small ^^.
* it's much easier and usually quicker to launch the fuel you do need from Kerbin.
* even in career mode, SSTO rockets for delivering an orange tube are pretty easy and cheap, SSTO spaceplanes even cheaper but still probably easier than docking base-components together.
* and there are probably several other reasons ...

That said, mining is fun just for its own sake so go for it if you want to try it. I keep finding myself enjoying it less and less though.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

[quote name='Pecan']I don't.
* base components are a right pain in the **** to dock together unless you're using KIS/KAS, so what you'll be learning is how to use a mod for game-mechanics that will probably change anyway.[/quote]

I was wondering about that. I don't use KIS/KAS at the moment & am reluctant to add more mods right now...

[quote]
* Minmus orbit is a lousy place to park waiting for interplanetary transfer windows. If you do mine there, bring the fuel somewhere with a shorter orbital period.[/quote]

what then, Moho?
[quote]
* for most interplanetary you don't actually need that much fuel anyway, unless you are over-building. If you want to do that, fine, but if you want to learn to build efficiently then build small ^^.[/quote]
Yes, I hear you. But I like the idea of being to replenish fuel along the way.

[Warzouz]

Personally I send space station with refueling capacity around nearly every planetary bodies.

With a "Miner" part of the station, I'm capable of refueling the landers and return vehicles easily (even on Eve, using Gilly). Si I can fully explore any planets when I want. The other advantage, is you don't need to bother of return fuel IF your return ship is capable or returning. So I can drain the return ship fuel when I going there. I'll refill them when they dock at the station.

the only fuel you have to keep is fuel need to land and return to the station with Ore

Check here : [url]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/132464[/url]

And Here for my first failure : [url]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/130691[/url]

[Geschosskopf]

[quote name='Clear Air Turbulence']N00b here, sandbox mode...............
But is the game worth the candle? I can now fairly routinely heft large orange tanks into high Kerbin orbit. What will a mining operation give me that Uncle Jeb's Orbital Fuel Depot can't? Your advice will be appreciated![/QUOTE]

I haven't bothered to read this whole thread so I'm certainly repeating what others have already said. But I've been building my games around mining since 0.20 (Kethane, Karboninte, K+, and now Ore) so I have some fairly strong opinions on the subject.

First off, unless you have no intention at all of ever going to other planets, mining within Kerbin's SOI is never, ever, worth bothering with. It's way simpler to just send out fuel from the ground if you want to go anywhere else. And even if you're going to stay in Kerbin's SOI forever, mining there is only useful as an exercise in base-building and learning how the resource system works.

Second, if you plan on going to other planets, mining within Kerbin's SOI is never, ever worth the trouble. It's way simpler to just launch what you need to leave Kerbin's SOI than it is to set up a whole mining complex on Minmus and bring fuel back to LKO to refuel your interplanetary ships. Besides, even in a career game, such operations never pay off because you'll never use them enough to recoup in fuel savings the immense cost and time sink of setting up and running such a thing.

So that leaves mining at other planets. And whether you do this or not, and how complex you make it, depends entirely on what you want to do out there. If all you want to do is send single exploration missions, then it's no big deal to equip them for self-refueling in the field. After all, you're going to be landing on various planets and moons anyway, it's easier to send out the mining/refining hardware than it is the fuel for a round trip, and being able to refuel usefully extends the mission and provides some self-rescue ability. So I recommend doing this. But because you're basically doing 1-and-done missions, there's no sense in building any permanent infrastructure.

OTOH, if you want to invade other planets, build massive, permanent colonies, etc., then you want to make those colonies as self-sufficient as possible. Which means setting up 2 separate mining systems per colony. One based on a convenient airless, low-gravity moon to refuel spaceships that never land, and one on the ground with the colony to provide for its dirtside needs, including refueling the cargo rockets that meet the occasional interplanetary ships in orbit.

You're playing sandbox so money's not an option. Therefore, there is no cost savings in making your own fuel. It's simply a question of what you want to do with your game and how much time you want to spend building, running, and maintaining infrastructure instead of exploring. It's kinda like owning an electric train set. Do you keep all the track sections loose so you can rearrange them as desired, but just have track on the floor with the occasional hand-placed prop? Or do you nail the track down to a table so you're stuck with it, and then work on building the surrounding environment around the track layout?

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Thanks, those are very useful comments.

One question: a lot of you seem to have refineries in orbit.

Isn't it more efficient to refine on the ground, and just take up the fuel?

[Geschosskopf]

[quote name='Clear Air Turbulence']Isn't it more efficient to refine on the ground, and just take up the fuel?[/QUOTE]

Yes, from the POV of maximizing fuel delivery in orbit for a given amount of ore mined. This is because empty ore tanks weigh more than empty fuel tanks (the fuel made from ore weighs the same as the ore---conservation of mass).

HOWEVER, there are 2 reasons not to do this. First off, ore tanks, despite being heavier, are way more compact than fuel tanks, so it's easier to build ships around them.

But the big one is the sheer complexity of refining on the ground. If you want to go for max efficiency, then you don't lift the drills or refinery. That means you need at least 2 ships to get fuel to space: a fixed ground base with drills and refinery, and a fuel tanker lander. And you have to be able to dock these together somehow on the ground, which is very difficult with docking ports everywhere except Minmus' flats, clumsy and Kraken-inducing with the Claw, and bug-ridden wtih KAS. And if the good ore is in hilly terrain, then you also need a fuel rover to truck fuel from the base to the nearest flat landing area, and have to be able to connect this to both the base and the fuel tanker.

But all fuel made from ore is free of cost, whether you're doing career or sandbox, so there's no incentive to be as efficient as possible. And it's a lot less time-consuming to minimize the number of steps in the process, the number of vehicles you have to design, build, test, and then get out there, etc. Thus, to make things easier on themselves, a lot of folks have a mining lander that drills and humps ore to an orbital station with the refinery. This station then refuels the lander so it can get more ore, and uses whatever is left to refuel other ships. This works perfectly well for most applications. Only those who have truly industrial ore consumption and are into efficiency and building the perfect colony need go the extra mile to refine on the ground.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

[QUOTE][COLOR=#333333]the fuel made from ore weighs the same as the ore[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

Now I did not know that. I assumed it was half the weight, but now I see I misread the wiki. That changes everything. Thanks! :cool:

[Warzouz]

I agree 100% with Geschosskopf, refining for LKO departure may be funds rewarding, but will take a lot of time. It's much better to recover most of your LKO stage, as I do.

Sending fuel WITH you interplanetary ship may not be fuel or cost efficient, but It's very time efficient.

Sending a refueling/mining capacity along with your interplanetary exploration ship is also time efficient, because you're able to refuel within few hours instead of waiting for the next window and interplanetary travel time.

As my playtime is quite short, I run for the quickest way to enjoy the game ;)

[Clear Air Turbulence]

Hmm. Interesting. So hat would mean that mining rig and orbital refinery around Duna could be quite a good way of opening up the path to Dres and Jool.

I like the idea of a process of planetary explanation with lots of ships that never need to touch down on Kerbin. I am saving Eve for last, I guess.

[Clear Air Turbulence]

P.S - that should be planetary expl[B]or[/B]ation. For planetary explanation all you need is Kim Stanley Robinson.

[Geschosskopf]

[quote name='Clear Air Turbulence']Hmm. Interesting. So hat would mean that mining rig and orbital refinery around Duna could be quite a good way of opening up the path to Dres and Jool.

I like the idea of a process of planetary explanation with lots of ships that never need to touch down on Kerbin. I am saving Eve for last, I guess.[/QUOTE]

Actually, Duna and Dres are really crappy staging areas for trips to Jool. This is because the further out from the sun a planet is, the slower the planet moves around the sun and the further it has to go around its orbit. So none of the outer planets change position relative to each other very fast. This makes transfer windows between Jool and Dres, for instance, be decades apart. So unless by chance you happen to be near one of the rare transfer windows between outer planets, it's usually a lot faster to go from Dres to Kerbin to Jool than it is from Dres direct to Jool, even if you have to wait at Kerbin for the window back to Jool.

There are in general 2 options for getting from 1 planet to another: less fuel or less gametime, and these are mutually exclusive. The stock KSP solar system is so small that it's really not hard to carry all the fuel you need for any given trip, although that's expensive in money if you play career. But if you can make your own fuel in the field, you don't need to take as much with you, so the cost of the rocket goes way down. If you're in sandbox, however, money doesn't matter. And the passing of time within the game only really matters, career or sandbox, if you play with life support, which limits how long ships can be in space. Without such a limit, then it doesn't matter to you as a player how many years it takes the ship to get from point A to point B.

To make an Eve colony independent of Kerbin, you definitely need to mine for other things besides fuel. You need to be able to build your own rockets there because taking off from Eve pretty much requires dropping stages, so Eve lifters are 1-use tools. This means you have to mine and process stuff to turn raw dirt into rocket parts over several refining stages. There are at least 2 mods that let you do this, Extraplanetary Launchpads and USI-MKS (not the Lite version). Both require building large, complex bases and supporting infrastructure. Lots of fun but a huge time sink and it takes a long time before it's all up and running.

[Octa]

[quote name='Clear Air Turbulence']Hmm. Interesting. So hat would mean that mining rig and orbital refinery around Duna could be quite a good way of opening up the path to Dres and Jool.

I like the idea of a process of planetary explanation with lots of ships that never need to touch down on Kerbin. I am saving Eve for last, I guess.[/QUOTE]

I just typed in some numbers in the online launch window planner to compare direct flights to the outer planets and flights with a refuel on duna. Turned out the direct flights to Jool and Eeloo are cheaper by 1000 m/s, except for Dres. There you can save 700m/s, but you arrive 4 years and 200 days later than with a direct flight for kerbin, you actually turn a lot of time into a delta save of 700 m/s.

Every flight assumed a 100km orbit at departure and and arrival.

Now the question for the ones who actually know how to do the math: How can this be turned into a gain?
As far as i understand, this can only turn out to be efficient on paper if you take all aspects of the missions into consideration:
- The Ships can be lighter, as the longest burn is 700-2500 m/s cheaper than a direct flight
- Lighter payload means less fuel und funds spent. For the payload itself and most important for the launcher
- You must bring a ressource miner, refinery and storage to duna, which means 1-2 aidditional launches (they can fly with along with the first vessel to duna, if a 500 day stay is enough to get fill up the other vessel)

When using vacuum engines like terrier, poodle or nukes, it looks hard that a fuel station can actually save funds. Just a few m/s as safety margin and it can turn out you need another mission which refuels there to get a plus.

Should anyone be interested, i saved the calculated flights into a text file.

[WuphonsReach]

Probably worth it.  In 0.90 I had a ISRU-like mod where I'd land a very large mining vessel with built-in refinery on the surface of Minmus and leave it there for 15-45 days.  The whole thing would take off and dock with a fuel depot in orbit around Minmus.

Yes, it's less efficient to bring the drill up/down with you, but at a large enough scale vessel (think 7x of the big orange tanks being filled up), it doesn't matter much.  Plus I didn't have to deal with trying to connect vessels up while on the ground (even though I had MKS/OKS).

[Geschosskopf]

On ‎11‎/‎19‎/‎2015‎ ‎7‎:‎35‎:‎58‎, Octa said:

I just typed in some numbers in the online launch window planner to compare direct flights to the outer planets and flights with a refuel on duna. Turned out the direct flights to Jool and Eeloo are cheaper by 1000 m/s, except for Dres. There you can save 700m/s, but you arrive 4 years and 200 days later than with a direct flight for kerbin, you actually turn a lot of time into a delta save of 700 m/s ......

Now the question for the ones who actually know how to do the math: How can this be turned into a gain?.......

It all depends on what's important to you, fuel or gametime.  Because by using Duna as a fuel base to get further out, you're trading less fuel on launch from Kerbin for way more elapsed gametime to do the mission.  As outlined above, transfer windows between the outer planets are MUCH rarer than transfer windows from Kerbin to any of the outer planets, and it gets worse the further out you go.

For most players, elapsed gametime doesn't matter.  But there are 2 main reasons why it can matter, both based on playstyle.  First off, if you use life support, then your Kerbals can only remain in space so long, which means you can't wait indefinitely for them to get anywhere.  So life support favors quicker, more direct trips.  True, there are other mods for suspended animation but they also have limits.  Thus, getting there as quickly as possible becomes a priority, which means no years-long waits while the outer planets align themselves.

Second, if you have more than 1 thing going on in your game, you can't simply can't warp ahead for years.  The amount you can warp ahead is dictated by whatever mission has stuff happening most frequently.  And the more other stuff you do, the more time you're at zero or relatively low warp, so the more REAL time passes before the next event for the long-duration mission.  Which means it might not actually get there before the next updated breaks the game.  So basically, any mission that requires warping ahead for years pretty much as to be the only thing going on in your game.

And seriously, 1000m/s savings between Kerbin and Eeloo is chicken feed.  That's not going to make or break your ability to design a rocket nor your ability to pay for it.  And that doesn't consider the thousands both of dV and funds required to set up the whole mining/refueling infrastructure at Duna to begin with.  So even without the time trade-off, refueling at Duna to go to Jool costs more to set up than it saves.

Seriously, mining is really only worth it in 2 situations:

1.  Self-refueling for a long-range, long-term exploration ship that's going to be landing on various bodies anyway.

2.  Self-sufficiency for a reasonably large, permanent colony, with the side benefit of refueling the transports that cycle between it and Kerbin.

With one exception, using mining to save on fuel for launches from Kerbin just doesn't provide any money savings, due to the large initial set-up cost and the limited number of times you'll use the system.  The exception is to build a mining/refining rover for use within the boundaries of KSC itself.  Build your rockets with no fuel in them, put them on the launchpad, and use the rover to fill their tanks prior to flight.  Then drive the rover to the runway and recover it.  Thus, the rover costs you nothing at all (except playtime to use) and your rockets are all cheaper by the cost of their LFO and mono (although you still have to buy any solid fuel).  But this is a bit of an exploit.