Mining, is it even worth it?

[ag3nt108]

I spent a great deal of time recently designing and delivering a number of craft to an ore field in Minmus, I wanted to experience the mining mechanics and get to grips with how everything works.  My operation consists of 2 modular miners that can be combined with docking ports.  A 3rd vehicle which is also modular acts as movable storage / roving tanker.  When parked the tanker is filled by the mining craft whilst adding its considerable reserves of electrical power to the operation along with its reasonable solar power generation.  A very simple probe core rocket is used to land and ferry the fuel back to a station orbiting Minmus itself and from there can be delivered to craft in LKO or craft can dock directly and re-fuel at the station.

 

Getting the 40 odd ton craft to Minmus was a considerable design effort and I learnt a lot along the way, designing and building the stations was a lot easier.  I have to say I'm not overly impressed with the whole system at all.  First of all the docking ports are finicky and it usually takes numerous attempts to get the craft to marry on Minmus surface.  My biggest complaint with the entire system however is that craft that are securely docked with brakes on and drills deployed jump randomly into the air when the physics model is applied (IE when I load them) this has on numerous occasions resulted in either damage or complete destruction to the craft themselves.  Doubly triply annoying when you have just spent 40 minutes roving at a slow and safe speed over the surface and another 10 minutes faffing about with the docking ports only to find the entire installation goes to hell when you tab to another craft and back.  Oh and I can't save while roving, so better be sure to get it right first time.  This along with the rest of the surface installations and building mechanics needs to be seriously looked at in the near future in my opinion.  Not withstanding squashing the remaining bugs people often report.

 

So my rant over, my question is this.  mining, do you even bother with it at all?

[Provisional Name 12]

previous mining operations I have done have worked fine, never had this flipping bug you speak of. I usually used a single mining/refueling vehicle that would go to the surface and top up then deal out it's  fuel in orbit. It always seemed easier, but I am trying new things this career using USI/LS and remotetech, so things may be much different.

Edited July 23, 2016 by SpaceCommunism

[Dr.K Kerbal]

If your going somewhere really far out in the solider system like Eeloo or the Jool System, a fuel refinery would be worth it. Put it somewhere in between your destination, or just make a planet your official fuel up station.

[Guest]

Well, I have found a lot of the same problems op alludes to. I made some adjustments to stop the landing legs from exploding. But still haven't found a workaround for the bouncing problem. Sure, one ship miners are ok for low gravity places like Minmus. But, don't work to well on larger places with higher gravity like the Mun. There have been numerous loud complaints about the airplane landing gear. But the fact is, the regular landing gear for rockets are also bugged. They work good for landing. But, when you try to use them on the surface to lower or raise specific parts of the craft to align docking ports, get ready for bouncy explody stuff to happen.

[RocketBlam]

Mating docking ports on rovers has always been a challenge. They might line up on Kerbin, but in lower gravity they might not, as well as if they are empty or full of fuel. I used Infernal Robotics to design rovers with docking ports that had adjustable height, but in the end just decided to make the drilling rig and ferry the same vehicle so I wouldn't have to dock on the surface at all. It's really heavy, but it works fine on low gravity worlds like Minmus or Vall.

Using a claw as your docking mechanism is the best solution for mating a ferry and miner on the ground. Just hook into any flat surface and pump away.

I usually build a mining operation on Vall because the gravity is fairly low, and it is central to the Jool system, and Jool is very far away. In the Kerbin system, putting tankers into orbit with SSTOs is probably easier and nearly as cheap.

Edited July 21, 2016 by RocketBlam

[Superfluous J]

Step 1: Replace "Mining" with anything else in the game.

Step 2: Have an existential crisis.

Step 3: Realize everything in the game is worth it.

2 hours ago, ag3nt108 said:

I learnt a lot along the way

To me that makes it worth it

But really, I don't think - after doing it several times in several saves - that a landed, dedicated Minmus mining base is worth it, even with KAS/KIS to make hooking things together easier. I personally think though that a ship orbiting Minmus, full of fuel, that can go down, land, fill its tanks, and then lift off back into orbit is a great thing and makes all interplanetary travel easier by making ships half this size on the launchpad or better.

[Blaarkies]

7 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

But really, I don't think - after doing it several times in several saves - that a landed, dedicated Minmus mining base is worth it, even with KAS/KIS to make hooking things together easier. I personally think though that a ship orbiting Minmus, full of fuel, that can go down, land, fill its tanks, and then lift off back into orbit is a great thing and makes all interplanetary travel easier by making ships half this size on the launchpad or better.

I am doing that for Gilly...because seriously, to have a base and then a station around Gilly is just as silly Gilly's gravity. I want to do it with Minmus aswell, but you need a lot of fuel to make the ISRU extra mass seem irrelevant. I have a Minmus base which can hold a lot of fuel, and then a 4nuke lander that carries a Rocketdyne large tank back to LKO. EVA fuel pipes make it so much easier, just land close by and thats enough. I see flexible docking ports aswell. But I would rather replace all this Minmus operations with a single B9 HX-sized mothership

Edited July 21, 2016 by Blaarkies

[THX1138]

It's worth it but you'd save yourself some time by taking the fuel from the surface of the Mun straight to LKO. I don't know why you'd bother rendezvousing with a an orbital Mun station only to have to perform another rendezvous in orbit of Kerbin. How big are the rockets you use to transfer fuel? The bigger they are, the few trips you'll have to make. 

Getting large amounts of fuel to LKO from KSC is pretty expensive.

[ag3nt108]

the finicky docking issue is one thing whats really bothering me is the way my installation leaps into the air and damages itself whenever I load it up.  The problem seems to be the psychics engine loading causes it to jump around its damaging the modules, popping tires and breaking solar panels etc.  IS there any fix or work around or have I wasted a monumental amount of time setting this up.

 

I send a tanker with 3240 units of LF and 3960 units of oxidiser, the station is just a place to store it until needed and a part of the network if you like.  I could have a bunch of these things floating around kerbin I suppose or have a station at kerbin but I wanted to plan and construct a station at Minmus.

[mk1980]

i never found mining in the kerbin SOI worthwhile. by the time you can unlock the mining stuff, you can also unlock the better plane engines. getting large quantities of fuel (and other stuff) from KSC to LKO is dirt cheap at that point.

it's pretty useful for remote places, though (other planets). and if you have no experience with it, minmus is a good place to build an "experimental" mining station to learn a few things about the process and find out what works for you and what doesn't.

[KerikBalm]

3 hours ago, ag3nt108 said:

I spent a great deal of time recently designing and delivering a number of craft to an ore field in Minmus, I wanted to experience the mining mechanics and get to grips with First of all the docking ports are finicky and it usually takes numerous attempts to get the craft to marry on Minmus surface.  

Well, thats more of a problem with surface bases in general, which can be avoided by huge monolithic mining operations:

This has no issues with docking on the surface, and the mass of the refinery is insignificant compared to the total mass, it lifts a lot of fuel up to orbit.
 

Quote

My biggest complaint with the entire system however is that craft that are securely docked with brakes on and drills deployed jump randomly into the air when the physics model is applied (IE when I load them) this has on numerous occasions resulted in either damage or complete destruction to the craft themselves.  Doubly triply annoying when you have just spent 40 minutes roving at a slow and safe speed over the surface and another 10 minutes faffing about with the docking ports only to find the entire installation goes to hell when you tab to another craft and back.  Oh and I can't save while roving, so better be sure to get it right first time.  This along with the rest of the surface installations and building mechanics needs to be seriously looked at in the near future in my opinion.  Not withstanding squashing the remaining bugs people often report.

This is an issue in that when physics loads the parts are placed in a position that isn't the same as the way they were left with all the forces (gravity, wheel suspension, docking port stiffness, etc) present. I particularly had a problem with this base:

on concave terrain... when it spawned/physics loaded, one end would be below the ground in the first frame, and explosions would ensue. However I also ad extendable gear to help align ports (action grouped to allow me to adjust height by raising and retracting them). I just extended the gerar on everything after docking, and then with the extra ground clearance and suspension range of the wheels, everything was fine

also, the drills, when deployed if low enough will "touch" the ground and support your craft (indeed, on this craft the drills replace the rear set of gears on that section). But if higher up, they don't actually exert any force on your craft/the ground, and don't induce vibration. So theres a certain length where the drills still drill, but they don't bounce your craft around.

Seperate mining from surface base construction, and its a lot easier.

 

 

[THX1138]

37 minutes ago, ag3nt108 said:

the finicky docking issue is one thing whats really bothering me is the way my installation leaps into the air and damages itself whenever I load it up.  The problem seems to be the psychics engine loading causes it to jump around its damaging the modules, popping tires and breaking solar panels etc.  IS there any fix or work around or have I wasted a monumental amount of time setting this up.

 

I send a tanker with 3240 units of LF and 3960 units of oxidiser, the station is just a place to store it until needed and a part of the network if you like.  I could have a bunch of these things floating around kerbin I suppose or have a station at kerbin but I wanted to plan and construct a station at Minmus.

 

3 hours ago, Otis said:

Well, I have found a lot of the same problems op alludes to. I made some adjustments to stop the landing legs from exploding. But still haven't found a workaround for the bouncing problem. Sure, one ship miners are ok for low gravity places like Minmus. But, don't work to well on larger places with higher gravity like the Mun. There have been numerous loud complaints about the airplane landing gear. But the fact is, the regular landing gear for rockets are also bugged. They work good for landing. But, when you try to use them on the surface to lower or raise specific parts of the craft to align docking ports, get ready for bouncy explody stuff to happen.

 

It's a lot easier to dock on the surface using the claw instead of docking ports but you could also use the flexible docking tube mod.

Regarding your vessels jumping off the ground, perhaps you could add your experiences to this thread I just created in the support forum because I also have this issue. 

In my opinion your tanker is way too small. Maybe you haven't unlocked bigger tanks yet? This picture isn't very clear but it's what I use and I still wish it was bigger:

Edited July 21, 2016 by THX1138

[THX1138]

[REMOVED]

Edited July 21, 2016 by THX1138

[Superfluous J]

One other thing, if you can lower yourself to use Hyperedit (I can) and you've done a single run with your fuel ferry to prove it's possible for both the ship and your abilities, and the only thing keeping you from using the process for real is that you'll spend all of your KSP time being a fuel trucker, then I personally think it's totally fine to just fill up the tank in the orbiting Minmus station every month or so. However long it would take to produce the fuel on the ground.

Really that's just using Hyperedit as a stand-in for rudimentary automation that I think should be in the game anyway.

[Xyphos]

mining is worth it, even on Kerbin;
you can practice building surface refineries on Kerbin and harvest some fuel for later use.
it's cheaper to launch an empty rocket and fuel it while it's on the pad.
on Minmus, the low gravity and high resource yeild is essential to any interplanetary expidition.

[Superfluous J]

1 minute ago, Xyphos said:

it's cheaper to launch an empty rocket and fuel it while it's on the pad.

Haha I imagine an immense drilling rig right next to the launch pad, and using the tanks filling as a sort of stand-in for Kerbal Construction Time.

[Xyphos]

Just now, 5thHorseman said:

right next to the launch pad

actually, just off to the north of the runway is a 6% ore field, I often setup there and drive tanker trucks with a klaw

[THX1138]

 

Just now, Xyphos said:

actually, just off to the north of the runway is a 6% ore field, I often setup there and drive tanker trucks with a klaw

You could also create a fuel line with KAS  

[tjsnh]

I've found that the ISRU mining isn't especially useful closer-than-dres. The extra effort/bosters/etc needed to get the mining stuff to the destination, plus the mining gear itself, far outweight the extra capacity of just sticking another fuel tank somewhere.

The payoff/utility value seems to be when you're going to somewhere like Tylo, Eeloo, etc - either with big gravity, where bringing extra fuel down is more difficult, or far away where bringing extra fuel costs too much delta-V. Even then, in my experience, only the smaller tanks/drill end up being "worth it" for the weight they cost.

When I use the mining parts, I usually have the mining stuff at the very bottom of the lander, and leave it behind when I return to orbit. The issue seems to be the payoff-vs-return for towing the extra weight around, and it varies wildly by destination and specific mission. It can absolutely be "worth it" - it's just very situational. Also, IMHO, the "mining rover, returns to base to deliver ore" is way more trouble than it's worth for the reasons you outlined above in the original post.

[magnemoe]

Mining on Minmus is to refuel stuff in LKO mostly for large interplanetary missions.

This is my Minmus base outside of an extra ore module, the huge with the orange tanks is stock and one unit. The long one is from planetary bases and has science lab and greenhouse.
An small science lander behind.


Tanker docked to refuel an empty stage in low orbit, the stage is used as an fuel depot. you save a lot by having interplanetary ships arrive empty at LKO


Tylo SSTO, it must mine on the surface to fill its tanks to reach orbit again. its also an SSTO the same way on Kerbin and Laythe. 
Very useful in the Jool system. 


Base on Pol, ssto with aerodynamic nose with parashutes in back. 


SSTO and its transfer stage on Val, for Tylo and to some degree Laythe the ssto must be filled for landing, however with mining I can get unlimited landings on any body outside Eve. 
 

 

48 minutes ago, mk1980 said:

i never found mining in the kerbin SOI worthwhile. by the time you can unlock the mining stuff, you can also unlock the better plane engines. getting large quantities of fuel (and other stuff) from KSC to LKO is dirt cheap at that point.

it's pretty useful for remote places, though (other planets). and if you have no experience with it, minmus is a good place to build an "experimental" mining station to learn a few things about the process and find out what works for you and what doesn't.

Mun is better for training in that its closer and an mining ssto is nice to visit places on Mun and doing various Mun contracts. 

[Xyphos]

16 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

 

I'm curious about this one, the AIRBRAKES are upside-down or does it re-enter nose-first?

[cantab]

You ask the question "is mining worth it?" but you then go on to complain about something different. You don't need to build a complex multi-module surface base to take advantage of ISRU. Conversely you don't need to use ISRU to build a base.

If your objective is to mine fuel, consider instead a single ship that can land, drill, optionally convert, and return to orbit. No roving or surface docking needed.

If your objective is to make a base, both wheels and legs are problematic in 1.1.3. You might consider using neither, or just waiting until KSP 1.2.

[magnemoe]

31 minutes ago, Xyphos said:

 

I'm curious about this one, the AIRBRAKES are upside-down or does it re-enter nose-first?

No rear first however I found they work just as well both ways, having them like this looks better and probably put them more in shadow of ship, main purpose is to keep ship stable during the final part of decent but also to allow fine tuning of landing zone, that is why I have four, so I can have two open for stability and two for brake adjustment. 

[Boganaut]

A setup I find works for me is to have an all-in-one miner/refiner/ore-tanker. No fiddly docking - just mine and refine until large ore tanks and fuel tanks are full then launch and rendezvous with an orbital refinery. Transfer all ore to the refinery along with any fuel not needed for a return to the surface. For a conservative safety margin, I look at how much fuel I used to make orbital rendezvous and keep about 150% of that amount of fuel on board the miner to return to the surface. I like to do this all at once so the time I'm not mining is just the time required to perform the manoeuvres.

For the Kerbin and its moons, I found it more economical to run an ore shuttle between Minmus and Munar orbit than to lift ore up off the Mun. I generally find it fairly taxing to deliver to LKO though. I need to tweak my ore shuttle design because the last time I dropped one down into LKO, it ran dry on the way back up and needed to call in help from Restitution Station in Munar orbit.

Not to badmouth the Mun for mining though - it certainly works and is an excellent proving ground for any miner design you might want to deploy to sustain operations out at Duna and Ike. If you have a miner works well on the Mun with a good fuel safety margin, then it should work well on Ike also. My very earliest Mun miner built for an early-ish career mission was up until very recently in use on Ike! There would be two, except one broke in two during an explosion-y kind of thing at Restitution Station.

All this is to say, I do find mining worthwhile as it allows indefinite flight operations in the vicinity of the mining operation.

[uncle_jew]

If drills break your ships, make sure the non-rotating part of the drill doesn't touch the surface when the drill is extended. This was my first mistake when I started drilling - I mounted drills too low. When extended, their non-rotating parts put pressure against the surface, adding stress to my ship and often causing it to break up. Only the extensible rotating portion of the drill should go below the surface.

Mining makes it much easier (and cheaper) to explore the Kerbol system, but it kills a lot of the fun. Because there is no longer any pressure to design efficient spaceships - just launch something with almost empty tanks into LKO using cheap SRBs, fill up tanks at my LKO fuel depot and then fly for free.

I don't use docking for mining operations, because I don't see any point doing it - fuel is free, so hauling the ISRU converter to the surface and back to orbit costs nothing (plus I don't need big ore tanks this way).

I developed two types of mining operations.

1) A big flying fuel factory for mining Minmus and delivering the fuel to LKO, with nuclear engines. Nuclear engines are needed here, because with conventional engines, I would burn more than the half of my fuel for the transfer to LKO and for the later return back to Minmus.

2) A medium-sized craft for exploring the Kerbol system, equipped with drills, an ISRU converter and fuel cells for powering all this. It has slightly over 5000m/s deltaV when fully fueled, thus allowing unlimited free travel, except to the surface of Kerbin, Eve and Tylo (where my TWR isn't sufficient).

But as I said, these basically put you into the "superuser mode" - you suddenly can do anything you want, which kills the fun.