Mining, is it even worth it?

[Rune]

4 hours ago, AlexanderB said:

How much fuel is typically in an E-class asteroid? a C-class clearly wasn't worth the effort.

Still experimenting with # of drills v/s the ISRU, and still not sure about the radiators, the ISRU seems to run a little hot regardles of radiator count, but at least it doesn't randomly shut down.

 

Yup, I have a big rock on LKO with 1,200mT out of the 1,400 it came with. It is also unbelievably fun to fiddle with using KAS.

 

Rune. D classes will already give you hundreds of tons and are much easier to wrangle, tough.

[pandaman]

To me, this is a case of it may be financially viable for career depending on the details of your operation.  For sandbox obvious finances aren't an issue, but it may fit what you want to do in the game. 

Ultimately I think it's down to 'if you enjoy it then it's absolutely worth it'.  But if it's not what you want to do then you can simply choose not do it, whatever your game mode or play style.

[Jetski]

I use a 2 part miner usually. Part 1 is a stationary drilling rig with isru, drills, power, and ore tank. Part 2 is a large fuel tank with wheels and a Klaw. I land them separately, and drive the fuel truck over and klaw on. Mine and convert to fill, then disconnect before leaving focus. Then no base jumping excitement, and if I land a ship nearby I can drive the tank over and klaw to that for fill ups. 

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I think it all depends on the program you want to run. Do you want efficient ships that can travel all over in one flight? Refueling is for you. Direct flights to one specific destination? Not really.

Personally, I mine rarely, never in Career. Once, I got a contract to set up a mining operation on Minmus. It was one of my biggest projects. I sent an ore scanning satellite, and a big mining lander. It mined pitifully slow (I didn't realize the small drills were so slow), but thankfully due to some bug the solar panels generated power at night.

Then, I sent storage tanks to the Minmus space station. I heard having an engineer on the lander speeds its mining, so I added a detachable cockpit to put on the miner's docking port. Everything was going smoothly.

When the miner was full, I launched it and rendezvoused with the station. Dropped off my ore, and realized the first mistake. Remember the detachable cockpit? I had it on the top of the ship when I launched storage tanks, so it was docked between the ore tanks and the station. *sigh*

So I detached the ore tanks, and then the cockpit. Mistake #2. I realized the ore tanks had RCS, but no control. Alternatively, the cockpit had control, but no RCS. It did have reaction wheels, though, so I could orient it. So I tried to move the VERY bulky miner towards the cockpit. Mistake #3. I forgot to refuel the RCS tanks on the miner, so it quickly ran out of RCS and was dead in the water (dead in the space?). The cockpit, with no solar panels, ran out of power, and I gave up, watching my very expensive and time consuming mining operation slowly drift away.

So yeah, mining isn't really my thing.

[septemberWaves]

I haven't done much with the mining system, but that's predominantly because I didn't have a good modular base system. I will be setting up bases with ISRU modules in future though, because I now have two modular base systems that will work on any planet/moon (as long as I provide them with a deployment method, which usually has to be unique for that particular celestial body).

[Sharpy]

On 22.08.2016 at 6:03 PM, Choctofliatrio2.0 said:

I think it all depends on the program you want to run. Do you want efficient ships that can travel all over in one flight? Refueling is for you. Direct flights to one specific destination? Not really.

Personally, I mine rarely, never in Career. Once, I got a contract to set up a mining operation on Minmus. It was one of my biggest projects. I sent an ore scanning satellite, and a big mining lander. It mined pitifully slow (I didn't realize the small drills were so slow), but thankfully due to some bug the solar panels generated power at night.

Then, I sent storage tanks to the Minmus space station. I heard having an engineer on the lander speeds its mining, so I added a detachable cockpit to put on the miner's docking port. Everything was going smoothly.

When the miner was full, I launched it and rendezvoused with the station. Dropped off my ore, and realized the first mistake. Remember the detachable cockpit? I had it on the top of the ship when I launched storage tanks, so it was docked between the ore tanks and the station. *sigh*

So I detached the ore tanks, and then the cockpit. Mistake #2. I realized the ore tanks had RCS, but no control. Alternatively, the cockpit had control, but no RCS. It did have reaction wheels, though, so I could orient it. So I tried to move the VERY bulky miner towards the cockpit. Mistake #3. I forgot to refuel the RCS tanks on the miner, so it quickly ran out of RCS and was dead in the water (dead in the space?). The cockpit, with no solar panels, ran out of power, and I gave up, watching my very expensive and time consuming mining operation slowly drift away.

So yeah, mining isn't really my thing.

Mining requires very careful planning.

1) a GOOD engineer. 2-3 stars at least. Anything less misses the point.

2) a good origin and destination. Mining Mun is a mistake. Minmus is so-so. Asteroids are where the goodies lie. Your fuel station in Minmus orbit won't do much good though. It must go into LKO to be of any real use.

3) An integrated design. I had tried splitting the operation - mining ore, refining ore, transporting fuel - whenever I put a split in the mission, it was so tedious I'd abandon it altogether. The whole thing: mining, refining, storage and delivery, must be one single craft. If you're going for asteroids, integrating the tug functionality is good as well.

4) don't skimp on hi-tech. Technically you could run it on smaller solar panels, you could do with smaller fuel tanks, etc. But it will be too inefficient - even stuff like framerate drop due to the number of smaller parts needed will be a problem. It can't just "technically work" - it must be efficient.

5) Build big. Unless you're aiming at self-sufficient and self-serving (a lander that refuels at the destination) just use big drills, big ISRU, possibly more than one, and so on. The only parts you can skimp on are the ore tanks as they are just a buffer in integrated production. Especially in case of asteroids, think big.

6) Plan and pay attention to detail. Get a checklist, and go through the scenario, checking if every needed component is there. Lots of electricity, RCS is a must (this thing when full won't turn on reaction wheels alone), drills deploy to just right height (test on launchpad if they don't deploy too far!), enough cooling (account for extra electricity!) both a cockpit and a probe core (the engineer is not a pilot!), lights, struts, comfortably accessible and well lit docking ports for visiting vessels that come to pick the fuel (also KAS winch to fuel them without docking is a good idea), the ports located in such a way that missing them won't ruin your solar panels, and so on. And on top of that, it must be able to lift from the launchpad.

It's definitely worthwhile, but it takes very thorough planning. Designing the craft can take you a week, but then you have something that will serve you for years of gameplay.

[KerikBalm]

Someone just made an Eve SSTO that can deorbit, and reorbit... it uses ISRU.

Its utterly massive, but it basically would not work without the ISRU, as you can't land it fully fuelled, and it doesn't have many parachutes (those would kill its ascent) and it lands propulsively (also needs to do a precision landing at the highest point on eve).

ISRU is without a doubt worth it

[magnemoe]

21 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

Mining requires very careful planning.

1) a GOOD engineer. 2-3 stars at least. Anything less misses the point.

2) a good origin and destination. Mining Mun is a mistake. Minmus is so-so. Asteroids are where the goodies lie. Your fuel station in Minmus orbit won't do much good though. It must go into LKO to be of any real use.

3) An integrated design. I had tried splitting the operation - mining ore, refining ore, transporting fuel - whenever I put a split in the mission, it was so tedious I'd abandon it altogether. The whole thing: mining, refining, storage and delivery, must be one single craft. If you're going for asteroids, integrating the tug functionality is good as well.

4) don't skimp on hi-tech. Technically you could run it on smaller solar panels, you could do with smaller fuel tanks, etc. But it will be too inefficient - even stuff like framerate drop due to the number of smaller parts needed will be a problem. It can't just "technically work" - it must be efficient.

5) Build big. Unless you're aiming at self-sufficient and self-serving (a lander that refuels at the destination) just use big drills, big ISRU, possibly more than one, and so on. The only parts you can skimp on are the ore tanks as they are just a buffer in integrated production. Especially in case of asteroids, think big.

6) Plan and pay attention to detail. Get a checklist, and go through the scenario, checking if every needed component is there. Lots of electricity, RCS is a must (this thing when full won't turn on reaction wheels alone), drills deploy to just right height (test on launchpad if they don't deploy too far!), enough cooling (account for extra electricity!) both a cockpit and a probe core (the engineer is not a pilot!), lights, struts, comfortably accessible and well lit docking ports for visiting vessels that come to pick the fuel (also KAS winch to fuel them without docking is a good idea), the ports located in such a way that missing them won't ruin your solar panels, and so on. And on top of that, it must be able to lift from the launchpad.

It's definitely worthwhile, but it takes very thorough planning. Designing the craft can take you a week, but then you have something that will serve you for years of gameplay.

Agree with engineers, you can get an 3 star one with orbit around mun, land on Minmus, smart to refuel here, out of Kerbin SOI and back, if you plant flag on Minmus you just have to do an Mun flyby but find it easier to orbit and plot an Minmus intercept from Mun orbit.

Splitting the design work if you have KAS and it pipes, I however see it more useful in expanding an base over time, this game however I moved the base to Mun and used an upgraded one on Minmus. 
Agree on building big, now if you use KAS and can land accurate on Minmus you could just land your giant tanker next to the small mining outpost and come back after some days. 
 

Disagree a bit about asteroids, mostly as in my experience docking heavy stuff to them tend to attract the kraken. 
The second issue is that you need to put it in an pretty high orbit to get decent time warp. 
It works but I prefer to use Minmus, land giant tanker next to miner, fill it up and return to LKO, fill up empty 3.75 meter core stages who do second use as fuel tanks. 
Do the route again, this give you enough fuel capacity in LEO that you can afford the 12-18 days Minmus round trip. 

For deep space it depend a bit on your need, main role is to refuel the interplanetary ships and other stuff arriving. 

[Sharpy]

1 minute ago, magnemoe said:

Agree with engineers, you can get an 3 star one with orbit around mun, land on Minmus,

And plant the flag. Don't forget the flag. One flag per each kerbal landed. Silly, but necessary.

You can 'terminate' them from mission control later.

Quote

Disagree a bit about asteroids, mostly as in my experience docking heavy stuff to them tend to attract the kraken. 

Was the fact during 1.0.x.

Currently Klaw is pretty safe. Asteroids still do weird wobbling physics, but if the craft is sturdy and you don't abuse time compression, everything works fine.

Quote

The second issue is that you need to put it in an pretty high orbit to get decent time warp. 
 

240km for 1000x - which is a pretty token amount of extra DV relative to 70km and grants encounter in a very reasonable time.

[Terwin]

3 hours ago, Sharpy said:

And plant the flag. Don't forget the flag. One flag per each kerbal landed. Silly, but necessary.

You can 'terminate' them from mission control later.

No need to wait for mission control, just plant then retrieve the flag.

I normally do: eva, plant flag, retrieve flag, next

then re-board everyone at the end.

[Sharpy]

Oh! I didn't know you could do this. I thought you can only climb them

 

[Corona688]

It took a lot of trial and error for mining to be technically worth it for me, though the challenge was interesting and a few contracts paid out for it.  A few things I wish I'd known earlier:

• The little drill, like its name implies, is a toy.
• Mining without an engineer isn't worth it if it's going to make you wait.  If it's offscreen and you don't care, whatever.
• Mining should take a lot of power if it's working right.  Lots and lots -- over a dozen 1x6 panels isn't out of the question.
• You'll never pack enough batteries to mine at night.
• You'll care a lot more about fuel efficiency when you have to mine your own fuel.  Nukes are a good investment.

Edited August 24, 2016 by Corona688

[Sharpy]

Also, need four-star engineer to mine on fuel cells. Three stars is a break-even point (thus pointless).

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, Sharpy said:

And plant the flag. Don't forget the flag. One flag per each kerbal landed. Silly, but necessary.

You can 'terminate' them from mission control later.

Was the fact during 1.0.x.

Currently Klaw is pretty safe. Asteroids still do weird wobbling physics, but if the craft is sturdy and you don't abuse time compression, everything works fine.

240km for 1000x - which is a pretty token amount of extra DV relative to 70km and grants encounter in a very reasonable time.

For the 3 star you don't need flags as long as you orbit Mun not flyby. As I have flown up to 20 kerbals to Minmus and the base give plenty lag I don't bother. Kerbals rescued around Minmus plant flags as I might catch an Mun flyby on return. Flag on Minmus gives 0.5 xp who is enough to tip you over. 

Ok its solved, is the bug with drills continue to tap the asteroid also solved? 
I have one in Mun orbit and one around Duna, has used both for refueling but they have only refueled smaller landers and I uses the asteroid tug as miner.
The astroid miners run unmanned, has so large fuel and ore capacity they can easy mine during the long wait times. 

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

No need to wait for mission control, just plant then retrieve the flag.

I normally do: eva, plant flag, retrieve flag, next

then re-board everyone at the end.

I tend to plant all the flags to take an nice image, kerbals then remove nearby flags 

[magnemoe]

59 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

It took a lot of trial and error for mining to be technically worth it for me, though the challenge was interesting and a few contracts paid out for it.  A few things I wish I'd known earlier:

• The little drill, like its name implies, is a toy.
• Mining without an engineer isn't worth it if it's going to make you wait.  If it's offscreen and you don't care, whatever.
• Mining should take a lot of power if it's working right.  Lots and lots -- over a dozen 1x6 panels isn't out of the question.
• You'll never pack enough batteries to mine at night.
• You'll care a lot more about fuel efficiency when you have to mine your own fuel.  Nukes are a good investment.

Yes, the small drills is a toy, same with the small isru, but the small drill is more of an toy because the 2.5% ore requirement, 
Only use for both is smaller missions like an Tylo science SSTO. around an orange tank with fuel, two normal drills and an small ISRU, weeks of mining to fill it. 
Yes an good engineer is an must, my only exception is asteroid missions, they have so high ore concentrations and long flight times unmanned works, warning do not use the small ISRU, it only convert 1/10 of the ore and asteroids has limited ore.  

Mining during the night don't use energy if craft is not loaded, leave it alone more than 6 hours, then check. Note that then returning things don't works like if you watched it. 
First the ore tanks fills up, then it start adding fuels you convert, this causes the converter to use lots of power if you convert monoprop, fuel and oxidizer at once. 
The radiators are also light red, this pass and have never had problems with it. 

[Sharpy]

25 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Ok its solved, is the bug with drills continue to tap the asteroid also solved? 

I'm not entirely sure, but I have a feeling the Class E should have more than 23% left after dumping it into LKO. And since I had action groups broken, one ISRU was working at all times (while remaining 4 were inactive) while both drills were left on. So - I'm afraid, yes.

[AlexanderB]

yes, as in, it isn't solved? Because it isn't, turning on the drills and forgetting the ISRU completely drained an asteroid for me.

[Corona688]

1 hour ago, magnemoe said:

Yes, the small drills is a toy, same with the small isru, but the small drill is more of an toy because the 2.5% ore requirement,

Also because the small drill gets no improvement from engineers AFAIK.

Honestly, I've never used the big ISRU anywhere but the launch pad though.  It's so unwieldy.  I can balance a 1.25 ton full drill on one side with a 1.25 ton mini-ISRU on the other side to make something flyable, but what am I supposed to balance the 4 ton monster against?  Can't be engines or fuel, balance would be wrong.  Could be ore, ore containers, or some of the more mundo cockpits if I'm willing to haul that much dead weight around, which I'm not.  And it can't be mounted centrally as it's a) huge, b) not radially attachable.  You can forget using anything but the scissor coolers, either, as you can't radially attach.

Which is why my big-IRSU designs inevitably end up looking like skycranes with an IRSU tacked on

Edited August 24, 2016 by Corona688

[Sharpy]

29 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

 but what am I supposed to balance the 4 ton monster against?

A second such monster. With third in the middle.

And maybe two more on the sides.

As I wrote, if you want to play with mining, think big.

[Corona688]

"Big" can be a synonym for "silly", packing extra, pointless ISRU's just as ballast makes even less sense than packing rocks -- the rocks at least can be used as reaction mass.

[Superfluous J]

50 minutes ago, Corona688 said:

And it can't be mounted centrally as it's a) huge, b) not radially attachable. 

You can get creative with translation and/or cargo bays. But yes I think a stock inline drill is needed.

[Terwin]

I always stow my ISRU in a Mk3 cargo bay so that I can attach medium radiators to the side of the bay, and a large radiator on the back side if it is a tail-sitter(often flanked by solar panels)

I find the weak connections and refusal to accept radial attachments two of the 2.5m ISRU's largest annoyances(at the very least we should be able to hook up radiators and struts to it)

I also attach drills in pairs(often tweak-scaled so I can get the benefits of more drills without the excess part count).

Sure they may be draggy, but that is rarely an issue beyond the first 60 seconds of the mission.

(I also tend to either leave my final stage mostly empty or cross-feed it's fuel tanks for the launch stages then fill up the tank and ore storage on Minmus.  Only need about 1.5km/s beyond circularization to have plenty of safety margin to land and top off the fuel)

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Also because the small drill gets no improvement from engineers AFAIK.

Honestly, I've never used the big ISRU anywhere but the launch pad though.  It's so unwieldy.  I can balance a 1.25 ton full drill on one side with a 1.25 ton mini-ISRU on the other side to make something flyable, but what am I supposed to balance the 4 ton monster against?  Can't be engines or fuel, balance would be wrong.  Could be ore, ore containers, or some of the more mundo cockpits if I'm willing to haul that much dead weight around, which I'm not.  And it can't be mounted centrally as it's a) huge, b) not radially attachable.  You can forget using anything but the scissor coolers, either, as you can't radially attach.

Which is why my big-IRSU designs inevitably end up looking like skycranes with an IRSU tacked on

Put the isru, large batteries crew quarters and other stuff in an core stack, attach orange, MK3 or 3.75 m tanks on the sides, engines below them, put drills on bottom, solar panels and radiators hither up. 


Minmus base with 4 orange tanks, I offset the outriggers on grinders as I have life support and other stuff in core I will access. 
Other option here is MK3 or 3.75.