Mining and refueling on Minmus?

[strider3]

I am looking for a tutorial on how to set up a mining operation on Minmus with a refueling orbiter...and I don't understand most of it.

Once a scan for ore concentrations are done and you have found the spot you want to mine...how do you mark it so you can return to that exact spot with the necessary equipment?

How do you drop the drill, converters and tanks onto Minmus surface, and then set up a land base mining operation? I don't get how you get this stuff from Kerbin to Minmus...and I'm talking the basic "mechanics" of this part. Where do you put this equipment in the launch vessel? How do you get it out of the launch vessel and set up on Minmus?

How do you get the fuel out of the storage tanks and into a transfer vessel to bring it from Minmus surface to Minmus orbit, where a refueling station will take the fuel on?

I can orbit, rendezvous and dock. I can land on Minmus and the Mun (with a regular "lander"). I've been told to just keep doing this and then I will somehow, "magically" learn to do the things I'm asking about above...I seriously doubt that, however.

Any help with vessel construction and procedures to accomplish this is greatly appreciated...as the "magic" osmosis  has not occurred 

Vic the Newbal

Edited August 13, 2016 by strider3

[Deddly]

I moved your post for you, @Victor3. I also took away your other thread that pointed to this one, since it became redundant. If you realise you (or anyone else) accidentally post in the wrong place again, the best was to fix it is to click the little flag above the post and report it with a little note explaining why. That way, you get the attention of the moderators much faster, and they are less likely to miss your request. 

Looks like you have a fun game going. Keep up the good work, and I hope someone can help you with your question

[Tex_NL]

How do you get a large mining operation going on Minmus? You try, you fail, you learn and try again. This may sound very cliché but it - IS - the truth. Learn to launch and land big bulky, oddly shaped objects. You will certainly fail a number of times but that's the way you learn.

If you're not adverse to mods I would suggest you take a look at KIS/KAS. It will allow you to link together multiple smaller landers into one big structure without the need for surface docking.

[foamyesque]

As far as marking goes: Leave the satellite in orbit, and send a small lander with a Kerbal and a scanner down to plant a flag in the exact spot you want before sending up a base.

 

 

[magnemoe]

The left parts is an lab, greenhouse an living quarter from mod and an workshop from another mod ignore here. 
This is an pretty simple design, an core with the ISRU, large battery hitchhiker and an landing can, life support from mod and docking port on to and bottom.
Two or four orange tanks for fuel, poodle engines below the orange tanks. This let you land on both Mun and Minmus, I started with two orange tanks and drills and upgraded to four, the smaller version was moved to Mun.

Unless you use KIS its easier to mine and go into orbit to dock with tankers and ships. 
benefit of putting the ISRU in center is that its heavy and it would be balanced in center. 

High ore consetration is a bit overrated, you land set it up to mine and convert, then your tanker arrives you are full. Best tips is to use an enginer with many stars on the rig, this speed up mining a lot. 

 

[psychogre]

To set up a mining operation on the body, you'll need to incorporate an ISRU into a lander.  You could add the drills and ore tanks to it, or put them on a separate lander and then connect them via KAS.  Things may not go right on the first try.  I discovered that I vastly underestimated the power requirements for running the drills and/or ISRU - so I sent a second lander with the large power arrays and fuel cells.  I also realized that I needed a way to take the processed fuel up to the ships in orbit, so included a 'ferry' lander.  When these landers are connected with KAS pipes, it can share the power generation, as well as transfer the fuel to the ferry (just like is done for moving fuel between tanks on the same ship).

An imgur album of my mining operation:

http://imgur.com/a/REkrf

Minmus is a good place to train for this, due to the low gravity.  You'll get lots of practice for targeted landing; even if you're too far away, it's easy to make small hops to nudge it closer.  The landers need to be within close proximity to use the KAS pipes (or add intermediary pylons).  Not sure of the distance limit of a single pipe is.  

[Randox]

I've yet to get into building surface bases, so here is the method I used (I prefer to simply fly fuel into orbit these days, by my operation stands ready to be used again):

To help guide me to my desired landing location, I use a small probe with a more detailed scanner and simply land it at my intended mining site. Planting flags works too. I picked this method because I can move it whenever I want.

Now, here is the meat and potatoes of my mining operation (all the solar pannels are folded because I was docking, but you can see the big arrays on the bottoms ships engine pods, and radially on both ends of the station):

The docked ship on the left side is a crew ferry there to move crew around and top off its tanks. You can ignore it.

Docked on the bottom is my mining rig. The design could probably still use some improving, or I could make a clone of that central fuel tank that can hold entirely liquid fuel for the nuclear engines. Anyway, unlike most people, I don't refine on the surface because the ISRU is really heavy and I don't use a dedicated ground structure because I'm not that confident in my ability to land on a ground based facility without breaking things. Might try that some day, but for now, I use the drilling rig itself to ferry raw ore back up into orbit. Fully loaded, that rig is around 70 tonnes, hence the 2 tonne RCS fuel tank under the command pod and all the linear RCS ports.

The station itself acts as an orbital refinery and fuel depot. While not as efficient as refining the fuel on the ground and not carrying around the weight of those drills, the ship can still pull more than enough ore into orbit to refuel itself and still fill up the station tanks, though I believe it's only about 50% efficient.

 

This method is also a holdover from when I was using the Kethane mod, which was like ore but much faster and had more parts. In Kethane, my mining rig carried a small inefficient refinery that it used to top off it's own tanks on the surface, while using a bigger more efficient refinery in orbit to convert fuel solely for the orbiting base. Maybe someday I'll see if someone made an mini ISRU I could use, or build one myself. Or maybe I'll learn to land on things. Who knows!

Anyway, as I said, I normally just fly the fuel into orbit back at Kerbin. I would only resort to mining around other planets. The current rocket that will be launching all my current explorations to other planets arrives in orbit with 1 and a half empty Kerbodyne 14400 tanks, and they need to be at least partially refueled to reach the further planets and return with my current designs, and that's just not a practical scale for refining. Works well for smaller ships that only need to return to Kerbin, or may only be designed to jump between a planet and it's moons.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Randox

[bewing]

On 8/13/2016 at 2:51 PM, Victor3 said:

Once a scan for ore concentrations are done and you have found the spot you want to mine...how do you mark it so you can return to that exact spot with the necessary equipment?

You have a kerbonaut go out on EVA and plant a flag or two on the spot. Or you leave something parked there to act as a navigation target.

On 8/13/2016 at 2:51 PM, Victor3 said:

How do you drop the drill, converters and tanks onto Minmus surface, and then set up a land base mining operation? I don't get how you get this stuff from Kerbin to Minmus...and I'm talking the basic "mechanics" of this part. Where do you put this equipment in the launch vessel? How do you get it out of the launch vessel and set up on Minmus?

The items you need to make fuel out of ore are: drills, a converter, an ore tank, a fuel tank, and lots of energy (which usually means 2 or 3 gigantors). You make a ship that has some or all of these things attached to the outside of it. You launch the ship normally. You fly it to Minmus. You land it on Minmus. Now all the equipment is on Minmus.

On 8/13/2016 at 2:51 PM, Victor3 said:

How do you get the fuel out of the storage tanks and into a transfer vessel to bring it from Minmus surface to Minmus orbit, where a refueling station will take the fuel on?

Docking can also happen on the surface, as well as in orbit. You have a rover with docking capability (a klaw or a port). You drive it to the ship with the storage tank, dock, transfer the fuel to the rover. The rover drives over to the transfer vessel, docks, and then you manually transfer the fuel into that craft.

A drilling ship:

 

A rover that can land, dock, and do fuel conversion:

[Tyko]

Lots of ways to solve this. My biggest consideration was "How much do I want to lift into minmus orbit each time?"

• Simplest, but less efficient is a one-piece lander that lands, mines and launches back to orbit.
  • Easy because there are no connections to make between parts on the surface and you don't have to be an expert at landing multiple craft near each other.
  • Less efficient because you're repeatedly launching and landing all the weight of your drills, ISRU, etc.
• Middle ground (there are many of these) could include having one craft land and mine ore. Ore gets flown to Minmus orbit for ISRU processing - this is a bit better because you're not landing and launching the ISRU with its related power and heat management components.
• More complex, but more efficient is to "permanently" land your drill and ISRU and have separate tankers that land, collect the refined fuel and launch back to Minmus orbit.
  • More complex because you have to master accurate landings and you have to work out a way to transfer the fuel
    • I prefer use KAS connectors and pipes. They're easy to use and I can keep my parts disconnected when i'm not actively managing my rig - the Kraken tends to attack multipart bases when they are first loading physics. If I always disconnect my pipes before I scene change I can worry less about Kraken. The problem is that this requires a kerbal to do the connecting.
    • Using docking ports is another option. It can be done without having a kerbal around, but takes more engineering to make sure your ports line up between the vehicles.
  • More efficient because you're not launching and landing all those heavy drilling and refining parts each time.

 

Here's what my solution looked like. At the top is my manned drilling rig with drills, ISRU and two .675m nuclear reactors. In the foreground are two slight variations on my fuel tankers. The fuel tanker on the right was the stripped down version as I worked to reduce weight I was lifting each time.

Edited August 15, 2016 by tjt

[strider3]

That's what I'm talkin' about! Excellent info on the basic understanding I was lacking. I do have KIS and KAS and will now get a chance to try them out. I'm guessing, as I see no "pipe", as a part in either mod, that it is created when 2 ports are attached to 2 vessels or tanks? But I will figure that out. I needed the very basic info to get me started.

Thank you much, gang!

Vic the Newbal

[Spricigo]

4 hours ago, Victor3 said:

I do have KIS and KAS and will now get a chance to try them out. I'm guessing, as I see no "pipe", as a part in either mod, that it is created when 2 ports are attached to 2 vessels or tanks? But I will figure that out. I needed the very basic info to get me started.

Thank you much, gang!

Vic the Newbal

After attaching the ports (this can also be done as usual at the VAB/SPH)  rigth click the port and select [link],  then do the same in the other port. 

Another interesting part available in KIS/KAS is the winch. A crane can be very handy to move different base modules around. 

[Magzimum]

Regarding how the mining equipment works: My advice would be to just make a few simple rovers with drills, ore tanks, converter and fuel tanks... and run those on the space center. If you do not need to fly it anywhere, you can even put it all on one vehicle. The soil is not too rich, but you will get an idea how everything works, from scanning to mining. Also, note that stuff will get hot (run it for at least an hour, better a day to find out if it is stable)... you probably need radiators. It is not very complicated though, and I think that a single attempt near the KSC should teach you all there is.

Here's a trick to make the docking ports line up all the time: you gotta standardize something from the wheels up to the docking port. In my designs, the wheels connect to a girder, on which I put a Mk1 (1.25m) tank, onto which I attach a docking port. That way the docking port will always have the same height from the ground up:

I debated pretty much the same things as @tjt. As you can see I went with the option to have a permanent mining rig that stores fuel (the left part), and a rover that can fly (docked, on the right side, notice the little Thud engines tucked in around the center) to carry all the fuel. 

I answered @tjt's question "How much do I want to lift into minmus orbit each time?" with "A lot", because I only really need refueling for the really large ships that will travel to other planets. I do the refueling not for the funds, but because at some point ships just get too big to launch from Kerbin. The overall plan is still to get Jeb to Eve and back... and this is just one step to achieve that

In the back there is another rover that is not so relevant, but also has the same docking system.  Btw, this is all stock. I only have the KER mod installed. 

Onna sidenote, launching this rig was a tricky thing, as it is... less than ideally shaped in terms of aerodynamics.

Gently on the throttle, no faster than 150 m/s until 14000m up, and keep it under 300 m/s until around 20 km up, and bring some spare dV! I can say that Jeb was less than enthusiastic about having to fly this thing.  

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Spricigo said:

After attaching the ports (this can also be done as usual at the VAB/SPH)  rigth click the port and select [link],  then do the same in the other port. 

Another interesting part available in KIS/KAS is the winch. A crane can be very handy to move different base modules around. 

The winch has an 50 meter range, this can be expanded using an tiny rover with an extra winch. With KAS you can also put down an ground base, put two connectors and an winch on it. 
keep miner cable unconnected and you can target the ground base during landing. 
 

[strider3]

What are the limitations of the KIS/KAS pipe? does it have to be level? How far can it go?

[psychogre]

Not sure of the maximum distance, but I know some of mine have been as long as about 25m.  While your Kerbal is walking with the pipe, it's green, but should turn red when you've reached the limit.  The pipes do not have to be level, and can even pass through other parts (though I try to avoid this by having multiple ports around the craft to choose from).  The pipe range can be extended with the use of the concrete pylons as waypoints/junctions.

[strider3]

55 minutes ago, psychogre said:

Not sure of the maximum distance, but I know some of mine have been as long as about 25m.  While your Kerbal is walking with the pipe, it's green, but should turn red when you've reached the limit.  The pipes do not have to be level, and can even pass through other parts (though I try to avoid this by having multiple ports around the craft to choose from).  The pipe range can be extended with the use of the concrete pylons as waypoints/junctions.

Excellent...thank you!

[strider3]

Just to be sure I understand the "flow" when mining.

1. You need drills to mine the ore.

2. Does the ore have to be "stored" before converting, or can it go directly to a Convert-O-Tron (if one is included in the drilling rig)?

3. you need a Convert-O-Tron to process the ore into fuel and oxidizer.

4. Does the Convert-O-Tron have any fuel/oxidizer storage or do you need to include tanks or pipes to separate tanks?

5. Do the drills have to be directly attached to the Convert-O-Tron (see #2), or can they be anywhere on the landed rig?

I'm not sure of the mechanics involved, so I'm not sure of how to build my first mining rig. I want to do all work on Minmus and then transport fuel (of whatever type) to an orbiting station. Which brings up another question...can a mining rig production be changed from fuel/oxidizer to monofuel, or is this set at build? I'm not looking to build some huge mining/processing facility...I just want to give it a "first go". Like everything else Kerbal, once I try a small thing, I get the hang of it.

Keep in mind that this is just an experiment in learning how to mine, convert and transfer. I just want to know how to do it, for now. That way if I decide I need a larger operation...I've got the "mechanics" of it down.

As always, thank you for your patience and help.

Vic the Newbal

[psychogre]

1. Yes
2. Yes, an ore tank is required.  When the drill is active, it automatically fills these, until full.  In most cases, the convert-o-tron can process the ore faster than it is mined, so having that buffer is useful.
3. Yes
4. No - you need to have the appropriate tanks to hold whatever you produce.  Those tanks can be on the same craft or other craft that are connected via pipes or docking ports.  The fuel produced will automatically be distributed to the appropriate tanks until full.
5. No.  However, I have seen some comments that the drills need to be mounted on craft of 'reasonable' weight.  Not sure of the details myself.

• building a mining rig may be a bit of trial and error.  I ended up with a setup that consisted of two separate flights: the first lander had the drills, convert-o-tron, ore and fuel storage tanks.  The other lander had more fuel storage tanks and the gigantor solar arrays, plus a fuel ferry lander craft. (my previous post in this thread has a link to an Imgur album of this setup).
• The convert-o-tron has a menu of choices of fuels to generate, and you are free to switch from one to another (or multiple at once) at will.

[Plusck]

Agreed with @psychogre. I would add:

2: The ore tank can be tiny as long as you babysit the miner, since you just need somewhere for ore to sit until it's used by the ISRU.

However, if you go away and come back again, you'll get very very little of anything. This is because the game doesn't keep track of ore and fuel production for craft which are on rails. When you go back to it, the game checks how much time has gone by and then calculates chunks of that time (6 hours, I think) to see what is produced and consumed. If you have a tiny ore tank, it will be filled too quickly and you'll get very little fuel per chunk of time.

This also means that when you want to get the best out of your mining operation, make sure that when you go away, it is working optimally (100% efficiency, plenty of room for ore and fuel, full batteries etc.). I'm not sure how complex the "return-to-craft" calculations are (like, for example, do they apply a day/night cycle for solar power?), but I've had some odd results before with far too little produced.

 

One final thing to take into consideration: ore tank connecting nodes, especially for the large ore tank, are extremely weak. Weaker than 1.25m fuel tank nodes. So if your ship would look dangerously weak if you replaced the ore tanks with much thinner sections, then it is.

[Leftotian]

2 hours ago, Plusck said:

 

This also means that when you want to get the best out of your mining operation, make sure that when you go away, it is working optimally (100% efficiency, plenty of room for ore and fuel, full batteries etc.).

Actually you need to make sure that you have no room for ore left before leaving or you will get less fuel in your first day away from the craft. It will not affect performace after that.

[Corona688]

My "recipe" for a giant miner is 3 large drills, 3 gigantor arrays, a small amount of ore storage, three of the "edge" radiators tucked in shadow underneath, and one large ISRU.  How to build, deploy to minmus, and land it is up to you.

A fact you may find useful:  On Minmus, two "spark" engines can lift an entire full orange can. 

[Plusck]

3 hours ago, Leftotian said:

Actually you need to make sure that you have no room for ore left before leaving or you will get less fuel in your first day away from the craft. It will not affect performace after that.

Oh, ok. Interesting.

I thought ore drilling was calculated before ISRU usage of it for each 6-hour chunk. That might help explain some of the odd results I've had (the amount of time involved has militated against actually testing this out, personally...). 

[Leftotian]

36 minutes ago, Plusck said:

Oh, ok. Interesting.

I thought ore drilling was calculated before ISRU usage of it for each 6-hour chunk. That might help explain some of the odd results I've had (the amount of time involved has militated against actually testing this out, personally...). 

I'm not sure how ore drilling is calculated, but isru will only use what you have in your ore tank when you leave the craft and ignore all the ore that was drilled after you left. It will try again every 6 hours. So in every 6 hour chunk it will only convert as much as your ore tanks can hold assuming your drills can fill them that fast.

[strider3]

Thank you all! Let the trial and error begin

[strider3]

Do I not have enough cooling? I have 12 small radiators (8 where you can see them, 4 on the nosecone).