Mun mining or full recovery?

[Carrot]

In this stage of game I can finally mine on mun but it is hard to dock with uneven terrain. Also, I need to launch the fuel tank up to mun orbit, transfer it to LKO to dock and refill my ship. Then burn back to mun landing and dock with the base again.

Why not just launch fuel tanks up and refill? It is not that hard to build a full recovery rocket in KSP. Just put a probe core, heat shield. Parachutes then you can pretty much land everything on kerbin. You even save up time to dock on the uneven terrain by hitting the recovery button. Launches are cheap as well. Why bother so much to set up a mun base, mining and so on?

The more reasonable mining places should be jool's moons and duna?

Edited October 4, 2016 by Carrot

[Frozen_Heart]

Imo Minmus mining is more viable. Low gravity means it is easy to bring fuel up, and it is right on the edge of the soi so you can head interplanetary with full fuel.

[Tyko]

+1 for Minmus - flat ground and low gravity make it a better choice for ISRU. 

[Carrot]

But minmus has inclination problem. And flats doesn't have much ores in my game

[Tyko]

1 hour ago, Carrot said:

But minmus has inclination problem. And flats doesn't have much ores in my game

The "how much ores" thing is luck based. I've had games like that too and it's annoying. As far as inclination, it takes a bit more planning, but twice in every Minmus orbit there's a nice sweet spot where you can plot a transfer without an inclination change. Even with an inclination change, it can balance out when you consider the added DV costs to lift off in the heavier Mun gravity.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Carrot said:

But minmus has inclination problem. And flats doesn't have much ores in my game

The inclination will only cost 50 m/s to correct, make an node who takes you a bit outside of minmus, rotate it so you get an closes intercept out around where you intercept, now make an node halfway to Minmus with an radial burn to intercept. Now go back and move the first node an bit for an better one, Adjust your speed so you get close, an new adjustment on radial and you are good. 
You want Ap to be an bit outside Minmus orbit, much easier to set up, you get to it faster and it only cost a few m/s more as long as your burn not much higher than 900 m/s. radial is 50 m/s worst case and 150-200 to orbit. 

[Clancy]

Something I discovered after trying to keep an Orbital Mun Station supplied by mining the Mun: It's significantly more efficient to fly to a Minmus surface base and back to the Mun than it is to Land on the Mun. Assuming time is not a factor.

[Renegrade]

On 10/4/2016 at 4:41 PM, Carrot said:

Why not just launch fuel tanks up and refill? It is not that hard to build a full recovery rocket in KSP. Just put a probe core, heat shield. Parachutes then you can pretty much land everything on kerbin. You even save up time to dock on the uneven terrain by hitting the recovery button. Launches are cheap as well. Why bother so much to set up a mun base, mining and so on?

The more reasonable mining places should be jool's moons and duna?

There's no need to recover parts unless you're playing some some crushing funds penalty.  In default difficulty, the game just absolutely craps money all over you.  In hard difficulty, it's a bit less "FREE MONEH FOR EVERYBODY", but there's still plenty (esp. once building upgrades are done).

And yeah, the ISRU units are better deployed in far away places and/or places where you'll be doing a lot of landings.  I use ISRU to power my training programs for instance.   A surface base sends up fuel to an orbital station, and trainees arrive, land, plant flags, take-off, refuel and head home.  The re-usable lander is also refueled from the station (which is again supplied by a surface base).   In my 1.1 save, I had a Moho base set up with ISRU as well, so that craft only need one-way fuel capacity to visit...