What is the highest ore concentration on Minmus?

[Nich]

paying the money over again? you should get free updates

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Nich said:

paying the money over again? you should get free updates

Correct. Also, the saves folder setup and persistent file location and general structure has been consistent for years. I wouldn't expect those to ever change.

[Terwin]

On 3/1/2016 at 1:16 PM, Jeb! said:

Hello chaps, it's Jeb! and I'm new here.

I am planning an ore refinery on Minmus as a refueling base for deep-space missions. After extensive orbital and rover based surveys, I zeroed in on a 10.01% ore deposit less than ~500 feet across. This is the highest concentration I've been able to find. Is this the highest ore concentration on Minmus? Is this a good place to start mining, or should I keep looking?

Thanks, -Jeb!

I prefer to use the Scansat mod as it gives a nice interface to examine your map in details.

note: you need the orbital scanner(M500) to see the average ore in each biome, then you can use a surface scanner to scan once in each biome to get detailed look at all of the ore on the body.(no need to use rovers unless you are on Minmus where biomes are some times so close together it is easier to just drive there)

In any case, after you have done the orbital scan, just visiting the 2-3 highest concentration biomes with the surface scanner(and running the scan), should tell you the highest concentration of ore on that body.

 

On 3/1/2016 at 1:40 PM, Jeb! said:

I've heard it both ways. I believe it's scientists, and not engineers though.

Phooey, I have to buy KSP over again (blame Steam) and I really hope I don't have to find high ore concentrations all over again! Can anyone shed light on whether ore deposits are randomly generated or changed between version 1.0.4 and 1.0.5?

Engineers provide a boost in drilling from 5x(0 stars) to 25x(5 stars)

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Engineer

I have found that with a 3 star engineer and  7-8 drills at a location with 5%+ will usually keep the ISRU busy with a trickle of extra ore.  One large extendable heat-sink will happily keep quite a few drills cool (I think it is ~15 heat/drill and 30 or 60 heat/ISRU and the large radiator cools 1000 heat)  I will generally use a Tweak-scaled Nuclear engine (2.5m identical to ~ 5.5 un-tweaked nuke engines) a tweak Scaled Drill(200% size is functionally identical to 8 100% pieces), and ISRU, and one large radiator to cool them(I don't use both at once so no reason not to share)

This lets me wander back and forth between Mun, Minmus and Kerbol orbit, with visits to Kerbin orbit to exchange crew/tourists.

[Jeb!]

@Terwin, Thanks! I was a bit confused about the finer points of mining.

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2016 at 9:14 PM, Nich said:

paying the money over again? you should get free updates

@Nich and @5thHorseman, yeah, I SHOULD, but when I when I took KSP off of Steam, (I don't like Steam) and put it back again, (don't ask) I couldn't get Steam to recognize KSP to get the updates. "Humble Store", where I bought KSP, won't give me the Steam Key back, and when I contact their support, a week later they email me: "All our support ninjas are busy right now."  Steam didn't feel like giving me the Key back either, even though I paid for it. I can't even log in to Steam Support, and wasted a whole day trying to figure out how to contact them.  But no matter, I bought KSP again from the KSP website, so now I can re-download and fix any problems I might have. I should have done that in the first place.   (Don't buy from third party websites, duh!)

What does this have to do with Minmus Ore? lol

[Hannu2]

On 1.3.2016 at 9:10 PM, Jeb! said:

So, if anyone knows, what is a good ore percentage to start mining at? Is 10.01% good enough? How does the percentage of ore affect the amount and time length of drilling?

What is enough depends on your mission planning. I try to avoid tight timings and do not need more than 3-4 % which is easy to find. If 10 % is not enough and you do not have any construction flaws you need another mining craft of larger one with more drills. As far as I know there are not significantly higher concentrations.

Typically there is practically unlimited time to do things in KSP. For example, if I go to interplanetary expedition, I have to stay hundreds of days on target due to launch windows. I land, cruise couple of hours with rover, land on moon, set up mining craft and notice that I have made everything possible before one week has gone and my return window opens after several hundreds of days. In such situation I do not care if mining lasts 2 days or 200 days. Concentration of 3-4 % is more than enough then. I can always use timewarp and get tanks filled in few minutes of real time. If I have refinery on Minmus I have hundreds of days between launch windows to planets. It is again indifferent how long it takes.

[juanml82]

22 hours ago, Jeb! said:

@Terwin, Thanks! I was a bit confused about the finer points of mining.

@Nich and @5thHorseman, yeah, I SHOULD, but when I when I took KSP off of Steam, (I don't like Steam) and put it back again, (don't ask) I couldn't get Steam to recognize KSP to get the updates. "Humble Store", where I bought KSP, won't give me the Steam Key back, and when I contact their support, a week later they email me: "All our support ninjas are busy right now."  Steam didn't feel like giving me the Key back either, even though I paid for it. I can't even log in to Steam Support, and wasted a whole day trying to figure out how to contact them.  But no matter, I bought KSP again from the KSP website, so now I can re-download and fix any problems I might have. I should have done that in the first place.   (Don't buy from third party websites, duh!)

What does this have to do with Minmus Ore? lol

You should open a thread in support, but if KSP is in your Steam library, you should be able to download it from Steam. Just backup your saves, screenshots and redownload all the mods you have

[Jeb!]

32 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

You should open a thread in support, but if KSP is in your Steam library, you should be able to download it from Steam. Just backup your saves, screenshots and redownload all the mods you have

@juanml82, I don't have KSP in my Steam library, that's what the problem was.  Steam is great when it works like you want it to, but when occasionally something goes wrong, it's just too bad for you.  I've had a lot of trouble with Steam over the years, with other games and simulators in addition to KSP. I already posted in Technical Support on this if anyone wants to see the details:

 

Lol, I guess this thread will go on forever, can't get "Best Answer" to work anymore...

If anyone has any more tips on ore mining, feel free to post them here! I'm still getting up to speed.

-Jeb!

[Rabada]

Right now I am working on a system to mine ore from Minmus and use it to fuel ships going to and from low kerbin orbit. I try to make everything re-usable, so once I put the infrastructure in place, I can launch from craft into orbit empty and fill them up with free fuel. I just started on this system of craft last night, and so far I have only really finished my two miners. I have not even start on my crew accommodations, or even figured out names for my craft. I use a lot of mods, but it shouldn't be too hard to make similiar craft to mine using stock parts.

 

Small Minmus Lander: 

 

For my miners, I prefer to make simple robotic landers. I have 2 different miners I have designed for different purposes. I love my first one, the Small Minmus Lander. It is a very simple miner with a very simple job, which is to bring ore from the surface of Minmus to my orbital fuel depot/refinery. Its very good at its job.   It is powered by nuclear reactors, but it could easily be powered by RTGs with fuel cells to supplement power during mining.  Besides that it has 4 drills, a poodle engine, a SAS/probe body from Spacey rockets mod, and RCS from the B9 mod. Even though the highest percentage of ore I can find on Minmus is 3 or 4%, it only takes about 72 to 96 hours to fill this lander full of 3600 units or ore from an average ore deposit on Minmus. I keep 2 of them in rotation, one on the surface of Minmus mining, and one docked to my fuel refinery station. 

 

Minmus refinery and Fuel Tanker

 

 

I'm not too happy with these designs at the moment, they work but they do not work well. What you see in the picture above is my fuel tanker craft docked to my fuel refinery station in Minmus Orbit. The station is designed to collect the ore from Minmus and convert it into fuel which will then beshipped via my fuel tanker craft from Minmus orbit into Low Kerbin orbit. My goal is to be able to launch my craft into orbit empty, and to fill them up with fuel I got for "free" from Minmus. Once I get this system operational, I plan to try to figure out the logistics module from the MKS mod so that I can automate this system, and avoid the grind of landing 20 times on MInmus just to get fuel to send a giant mission elsewhere.

 

I really don't like how wobbly and unstable the station is, and my fuel tanker is also very clumsy and difficult to pilot. I know I could easily make better craft, these were just thrown into orbit to test my miners. Right now I am leaning heavily towards adding a fuel refinery to my fuel tanker, and using the tanker itself as the refinery/fuel depot.

 

 

 

Large Minmus Miner:

 

 

My second miner is designed for a different role. It's for the second phase of my plan for my re-usableish space program. This miner is much bigger than the previous one, and it has much more capabilities. First of all, it carries its own refinery. Itt's more powerful, with greater TWR, which will allow it to land on moons with much higher gravity. It also carries much more fuel, to give it the deltaV to land on those moons. It is more capable because It is designed to operate independently. It is the first part of the interplanetary phase of my space program. If it converts the ore it carries into fuel for its own use, then it should have enough dV to land on Ike or one of Jools smaller moons. It will be sent ahead of the manned missions, so that by the time they arrive, they will have a full tank of full waiting for them. This will probably be converted from solar power into nuclear power, or perhaps a couple of RTGs with some fuel cells to power its mining/refining.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Rabada

[Jeb!]

@Rabada, Thanks! Cool ideas. For the early stages of mining, your robotic landers seem to be easier than building an entire base, and refueling from there. An orbital refinery is something I never thought of before, always thought a base was the only way.

I was going to say I didn't want to get into mods since it's so time consuming, but...

1 hour ago, Rabada said:

Once I get this system operational, I plan to try to figure out the logistics module from the MKS mod so that I can automate this system, and avoid the grind of landing 20 times on Minmus just to get fuel to send a giant mission elsewhere.

Autonomous spacecraft? That could really help a lot of refueling missions. Can anyone tell me about how you actually enable mods, and the effect they have on your KSP install? I fiddled around with Kopernicus a little, but I didn't really understand how it worked, and it seemed to slow down my install a bit. In IL-2 1946 SAS 5.3, (a combat flight simulator) there is a generic mod enabler that allows you to enable and disable mods individually hassle-free. Can you do this in KSP?

[Rabada]

8 hours ago, Jeb! said:

@Rabada, Thanks! Cool ideas. For the early stages of mining, your robotic landers seem to be easier than building an entire base, and refueling from there. An orbital refinery is something I never thought of before, always thought a base was the only way.

I was going to say I didn't want to get into mods since it's so time consuming, but...

Autonomous spacecraft? That could really help a lot of refueling missions. Can anyone tell me about how you actually enable mods, and the effect they have on your KSP install? I fiddled around with Kopernicus a little, but I didn't really understand how it worked, and it seemed to slow down my install a bit. In IL-2 1946 SAS 5.3, (a combat flight simulator) there is a generic mod enabler that allows you to enable and disable mods individually hassle-free. Can you do this in KSP?

Well, first of all

 

If you want to tumble down the rabbit hole that is KSP mods, I suggest you use CKAN to install your mods. Its simple and easy to use. Here's its user guide. I highly suggest the Kerbal Engineer mod. Besides that I would also highly suggest that you take it slow with the KSP mods, and only install a few at a time. The KSP modding community is vast and its easy to get overwhelmed. Also beware that until 1.1 comes out, KSP is a 32 bit application and its easy to run out of RAM if you install too many mods. 

 

Also, Kopernicus is pretty much a set of tools that enables other modders to change the solar system in KSP. It doesn't do much if you install it by itself, but it is used by a lot of different mods which add planets to the KSP solar system like the Outer Planets Mod. If you install the outer planets mod via CKAN Kopernicus will automatically be installed. Also note that mods that add planets to KSP tend to use up a lot of your RAM. (As do mods that add a lot of parts)

[RizzoTheRat]

16 hours ago, Jeb! said:

If anyone has any more tips on ore mining, feel free to post them here! I'm still getting up to speed.

My best tip would be to read @Geschosskopf's guide to finding good ore deposits before setting up a mining operation.  It made my life a lot easier

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/114388-paydirt-finding-good-ore-deposits/#comment-2029821

[Terwin]

16 hours ago, Rabada said:

Right now I am working on a system to mine ore from Minmus and use it to fuel ships going to and from low kerbin orbit.

I'm not too happy with these designs at the moment, they work but they do not work well. What you see in the picture above is my fuel tanker craft docked to my fuel refinery station in Minmus Orbit. The station is designed to collect the ore from Minmus and convert it into fuel which will then beshipped via my fuel tanker craft from Minmus orbit into Low Kerbin orbit. My goal is to be able to launch my craft into orbit empty, and to fill them up with fuel I got for "free" from Minmus. Once I get this system operational, I plan to try to figure out the logistics module from the MKS mod so that I can automate this system, and avoid the grind of landing 20 times on MInmus just to get fuel to send a giant mission elsewhere.

I am a big fan of the USI-MKS Logistic module.

So long as it has access to a sufficient supply of LFO or Kethane(you can choose which to use for a given flight, but I never installed Kethane so I always use LFO) it will autonomously transfer resources between any two vessels in the SOI.

I have done plenty of klaw-dockings for rescue 'and their vessel' missions, so I'll just let the 'yet another launch, dock, transfer, reentry' happen in the background

In the Kerbin system, it takes ~ 7 hours for a transfer between a surface location and an orbital location, with 1 hour for a surface to surface transfer.

I like to deploy an automated 'fuel station' with:
* a pair of large drills(tweak-scaled to 400% so each one is like 64 drills in one large part)
* Lots of fuel capacity(generally used to get them in place)
* ISRU
* Emergency life support supplies
* an appropriate energy source(often a MKS nuclear reactor backing up some 400% scaled gigantors)

Works great for easily refueling any ships I have on hand, even lets me refuel interplanetary transits after an initial 800m/s burn(appoaps almost out to the Mun, with a ~8 hour orbit and > 80% of the kerbin escape burn completed.  NOTE: if a ship is not in orbit, you cannot refuel it and if you do any burns while waiting for the fuel, the transfer will likely be lost)

I also have a Kerbin based refueler with an engineer on board and a lot more capacity(takes a lot of fuel to get all that fuel in to space, but it lets me launch interplanetary missions almost empty, using the core of the launch stage for the first couple km/s of the transit stage and refilling the main stage and ore reserves in orbit without additional manual launches)

Previous versions of the fuel stations did not use tweak-scaled drills or solar panels and that meant a whole lot of parts(30+ drills if I remember correctly, I much prefer a couple 400% drills, functionally the same as 64 normal drills each, just harder to cover with fairings and much easier on my CPU)  
 

Before the Feb major revision to MKS, I had refuel stations on Ike, Minmus, Mun, and Gilly, with more on the way to Vall and Moho with a self-supporting manned base on Minmus

Makes my kerbin-tour tourist/training missions much lighter when I can refuel at the Mun and Minmus without any drills or ISRU

 

[Jeb!]

Interesting. Thank you for this information! I must ask though, how do you "tweak scale"? Does it require mods or "cheats"? I am debating whether or not to get involved with mods. While there are obviously many benefits, I must decide whether it is worth the huge amount of time I would have to spend...  :/

Edited March 14, 2016 by Jeb!