[STOCK] Newb - Refueling on Mun and Minmus

[Jackelmyer]

So, if there's a link for this already... by all means share it.  But this is for No Mod game play.  I don't mind comments about mods on this, but I'm trying to keep my game mod-free.  Just not a mod fan.

 

That all being said, how the heck do you make the simplest, easiest to use, refueling station on Mun or Minmus?  I mean, what's the point of mining and ore on celestial bodies if they're such a pain in the rear to mine and push fuel up to ships passing by?

Right now I have a substantial mining base on Mun (minus some blasted busted solar panels).  4 large drills, two large converters, docking ports, the huge solar panels, radiators, it works!  Uh...  But getting the fuel loaded up onto my fuel Rover via a Claw to connect and then back into space?  What a freaking pain.  Hardly seems worth it.  Rover is 1 orange tank and two of the tanks the next size smaller.  Have to use so much of the blasted fuel to get back into space that I have to imagine there's a better way.

 

I just want simple tourism in batches of 16+!  Is that too much to ask!  lol

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

You've brought up several issues. Taking them one by one,

Problem: inconvenient to transfer fuel on the surface.

Yes, it's a pain. Stock KSP makes it very inconvenient to join two ships on the surface.  Basically, either you need to play games with rovers (as you're currently doing), or else use a mod.  (Kerbal Attachment System is good for this.) If you'd prefer to stay with stock-only, then it sounds pretty much like you've already got a handle on it.

Another option is, don't build a surface base; make an orbital station instead. Big orbiting fuel tank. You have a miner/refiner that goes down to the surface, fills up, then back up to orbit and unloads into the station.

Regarding the "use so much of the blasted fuel to get back into space":  Can you be more specific?  How big a ship are you talking about, and how much fuel are you consuming to get to orbit?  It shouldn't take all that much fuel-- even the Mun just takes a few hundred m/s of dV to orbit.  Without more context, it's hard to tell whether you're "doing it wrong", or maybe just have unrealistically high expectations of ship performance.

A screenshot of your typical ascent vehicle, along with a description of your ascent flight path, would be helpful.

[bewing]

Klaw rovers don't have to be all that inconvenient. Something tells me you might be able to build a rover that drives and connects more easily than what you have now, if you are getting annoyed. I use klaw rovers myself, and the only thing I have to be a little careful of is managing my speed. It's hard to brake on the Mun. For klaws, the important thing is to have a flat surface to grab, because those are the easiest to do. So you use wing parts or girders for your landing legs on your harvester and your ascent vehicle, and that gives you flat surfaces to grab.

As far as the ascent vehicle using a lot of fuel -- you are in a vacuum. Use a nuke! One nuke can just barely lift one full Rockomax X200-32 tank off the Mun. So that's what I use for my ascent vehicle. One of those tanks, and one nuke, and a HECS2 to guide it, and just enough battery and solar, of course. And 3 strakes for landing legs, so they are nice and flat and grabbable. That'll get 900 Lf  plus a bunch of oxidizer to orbit.

I actually put my converter in my rover, because it doesn't need to run continuously. 2 big drills and one 300 unit tank and a couple gigantors to power the drills, with a little command pod for the engineer to live in. So my entire "base" consists of just the two ships: the driller, and the rover+ISRU.

 

 

 

[Foxster]

Some thoughts...

1. Don't bother. There's pretty much nowhere you can't go or anything you can't do that can't be done with a single launch from Kerbin once you figure out not to be silly with payloads. 

2. I've found the hardest part of having a refuelling base is reliably getting a craft landed next to it. Your craft can end up trying to hop for km to get some fuel. This is where MechJeb can be your friend - to allow you to repeat actions like landing that you could do yourself but can more reliably hand off to it. 

3. Have a dedicated fuel shuttle. Its just a big tank, engine and RCS. Land this, fill up and then re-fuel craft in orbit with it. Saves having to land any interplanetary craft for refuelling. 

[Jackelmyer]

I've been sheepishly trying to use a big orange tank with two X-200-32's attached as my shuttle from my mining platform to orbit around mun.  Two poodles, wheels, claw, some drone command pod, solar panels small x2, 250 mono tank... I needed to rebuild the darn thing anyway because the X200 tanks are on the back and the thing keeps doing wheelies. 

/facepalm

 

So atomic and smaller it is.

 

One other question.  Is there any reason why a rovers wheels will occasionally switch it's steering direction?  I built this Rover in the VAB as part of my rocket design and build.  For whatever reason, after switching wheel directions to get everything running and turning correctly, a couple wheels will randomly invert steering and the rover gets stuck pigeon toed.  didn't happen driving around the launch pad.  Happens a lot on mun.  using the wheels right before the last big rover wheels.  Sorry, can't recall the wheel name.  Not the shopping cart wheels.  More like inner tubing wheels. :-/

 

[bewing]

The wheel problem has something to do with the control point, but I haven't figured it out yet. Can you get the failure to happen repeatably?

In any case, if you want the wheels to work correctly, set the Klaw on the nose of the rover as the control point (it gets reset occasionally, so you have to keep redoing it). It should always work right after you do that.

[ForScience6686]

I recommend an orbital refinery,  surface drills,  and an ore transport.   refining uses a lot of power,  and your dark period is shorter when in orbit,  so less batteries.   No need to hall the mining equipment with you,  so leave it on the surface.   as far as transferring resources, I went with kas/kis,  it has helped immensely with surface connections.   now for landing near your mining base.   set it as target and come in low, I only mine  minmus as there are less losses.  I usually line up to overshoot and then zero out horizontal speed and drop into the base.   one thing that helps is my mining base is color coded  via  lights.   this way I know where I need to land for quick hook ups.   after a few runs it becomes quite easy to land within meters of your target.

[Raideur Ng]

Orbital refinery is the ticket.

Not only does it avoid the hassle of docking on the surface, but also actually hitting a specific spot on the surface can spend needless fuel. A dedicated Ore Hauler scaled up significantly maximizes the payload to orbit because it minimizes the dead weight of drills and other systems. As long as you do the math and ensure a full hauler can reach orbit, you will have no hassles.

Bases are sadly not very useful in the grand scheme of things, at least not from an ease-of-use perspective. If you're going to make fuel and launch it into orbit, why not launch it from Kerbin as has been pointed out. Lastly, hauling the ore allows you to complete those contracts that required you to deliver ore to Kerbin. They are quite a pain, but the rewards are big. They would be far more hassle if your refinery and ore storage is a base.

 

Also, who mines for ore on the Mun when Minmus is so much easier?

[Jackelmyer]

Well I'm playing career mode and I'm fairly newbish.  I haven't yet dipped into the world of DeltaV but I suppose that'll be my next thing.  TWR has helped a lot.  I imagine properly calcing deltaV would be equally helpful.  Just trying to avoid turning yet another game into a job. 

[OHara]

If you continue to refine on the surface, a minimal shuttle using a terrier pushing an orange tank has 6000m/s dV [front view / rear view].  You might want aircraft wheels so you can build up orbital speed on Minmus flats, but even a rocket-style launch cost less than 10% of the payload in fuel.

Wheels steer nicely (each turning to fit its individual turning radius) if you select a part for "control-from-here" that (1) points forward and (2) is right-side-up.  When the bottom half of navball does not show ground, KSP switches to a different pattern of wheel-turning, the purpose of which I cannot guess.  

For making connections in stock (without KIS or KAS) I chose a standard height for docking ports, and give each module its own probe core and powered wheels.

Edited November 27, 2016 by OHara

[James Kerman]

9 hours ago, Jackelmyer said:

One other question.  Is there any reason why a rovers wheels will occasionally switch it's steering direction?  I built this Rover in the VAB as part of my rocket design and build.  For whatever reason, after switching wheel directions to get everything running and turning correctly, a couple wheels will randomly invert steering and the rover gets stuck pigeon toed.  

I have somewhat the same problem - I built a refuelling rover in the VAB and that has the same issue as you.  On the same mission I built another rover in the SPH and added it to the vessel.  The SPH rover steers just fine so I'm assuming it has to do with symmetry.  I tried a fix where I added wheels in the VAB individually and this helped a little but it still occasionally requires steering to be inverted on some wheels to avoid pigeon-toeing.

[Jackelmyer]

As for the wheel turning issue, I found that having a docking port on top of my rover, then setting that port as my control point solves the wheel issue.  Specifically, on top of my rover towards the front of the vehicle.

 

Have a Mun mining base and switched to having a fully dedicated rover for moving fuel between the mining base and a new dedicated fuel hauler.  Multi role craft are expensive and tedious I think is my take away here.

 

That and the end game rover wheels seem like a must.  At least, they help immensely!