Which is better to mine, Minmus, or the Mun

[magnemoe]

22 minutes ago, Champ said:

Hi all

2 things here :

First, the "no mining in kerbin SOI" thing : I think you are talking about sandbox. In a Career game, it's way cheaper to mine from minmus/mun than it is to haul fuel in orbit from the surface of kerbin. (well, not for the first refuel, ok)

Second, the "where to mine" thing : as i understand it, you guys all consider you would mine from the mun (or minmus) and leave that fuel in mun (or minmus) orbit (or landed). Personnally, i have a large ship that mines from minmus, converts the ore to fuel, and haul that fuel to my kerbin station (200km circular orbit).
I don't know if it's optimal or not, i am just saying there is a third option. Note : yes, i know it would be far cheaper to just haul the ore and convert it in the station (no need to haul the converter), but i think it is safer like this (no 'oops, no fuel left' problem).

 

I do the same, convert then move to LKO with tanker to fill up ships in LKO, this is also mosot common

Yes its more economical to take the ship to Mun or better minmus, top up tanks then drop down to LKO to save around 1000 m/s on the burn, has done it but find it too much work for most missions. huge bases to Moho or Eeloo earns most on this as transfer stage needs lots of fuel and long burns 
 

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, 5thHorseman said:

And don't say it's extra work that you could just throw extra fuel tanks at on the surface. Of course you could. You could save even more time by not playing the game at all. Just because you don't want to do it doesn't make it an inherently bad idea.

Well, that's exactly what I'm going to say   Using Minmus to top up is only worth the hassle with self-refueling ships.  Then it's just just an extra stop for the ship you want to focus your attention on anyway.  It adds a dab of complexity to the ship and mission design, it gives the crew some extra experience, and it doesn't greatly increase the cost of the ship, the brainpower needed to build it, or overall mission time.

However, refueling within Kerbin's SOI is never worth it for ships that can't refuel themselves.  This is because now you have to create a whole mining infrastructure, so you have all the sunk costs of the time it takes you to design it and get it up and running, plus the money involved.  Then you have to take more time to actually operate this system instead of flying the ship on the mission you actually care about.  The monetary savings are minuscule per use so it will take many uses to recoup the sunk costs of the system, and the time required will discourage you from using it very often.  It's a lot quicker, cheaper, and easier to just launch the ship with an extra 1100m/s in the tanks to start with and go straight to the target.  Or even dock a 1-use tanker to it in LKO with the extra 1100m/s.