[solved] ISRU on Eve not working

[marcnesium-iv]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently trying to do a manned mission to Eve and back. My lander (see picture below) is a simple asparagus rocket on top of some sort of launch platform. Below the platform was a rover attached which is not shown on the picture. In order to safe mass my plan was to bring an empty ascent rocket and fill it up using some ISRU equipment on the launch platform while the rover collects some science. However, the ISRU equipment does not seem to work. In particular my setup consists of:

• 2 x Drill-O-Matic
• 2 x Convert-O-Tron 125
• 2 x Radial holding tanks (on the vertical beams below the Convert-O-Tron's)
• Radiators, batteries and solar panels

The fuel was then supposed to be transported into the 1st stage of my asparagus staging via the fuel duct and from there transported successively to the inner stages. First question: Can this fuel transport work in principle?

The Drill-O-Matic's show an ore rate of 0.01/s which seems pretty small, but the ore tanks don't fill above a few mg (yes, mg). The Convert-O-Tron's display "inactive". As you can already see, I have a few mods installed (game version 1.8.1) - most notably for this problem are KSPI-E and SCANsat. The SCANsat scans of Eve show not really much ore overall, but the region where I landed should have an ore concentration of ~1%. Does it just take really long to mine the necessary ore or am I missing something else here?

Thanks already for your help!

Edited March 8, 2020 by marcnesium-iv

[I likeOxidizerrfuel]

I have never been to Eve before, but I think I know whats up here.

So, I think because you are in an area that doesn't have much ore and that the convert o tron is getting too little ore.

I might be wrong though! So don't use my hypothesis as fact. 

I'll try to keep you posted.

[Cavscout74]

Typically I look for locations with at least a 10% ore concentration.  I don't use scansat, but you should be able to use the stock surface scanning module to tell you the exact concentration where you are at.  A 1% concentration will be extremely slow to mine.   The ore tanks aren't filling because the convert-o-tron is using the ore faster than it's being mined - which is pretty typical even on better ore concentrations.

Also, engineers speed up mining & ore processing (at the cost of increased power drain & heat production)

Edited March 2, 2020 by Cavscout74

[AHHans]

Well, as far as I can tell everything is working as advertised.

You don't have an engineer on board, so the Drill-O-Matics (and the Convert-O-Trons, but they aren't the bottleneck) work only at 5% nominal capacity. So while they do generate ore it is really only a trickle. And all of the ore that is mined gets immediately processed by the Convert-O-Trons, the combined Lf and Ox conversion mode is active. But you only have the small Convert-O-Trons not the big ones. And the small ones have the "feature" that they waste 90% of the ore and convert only 10% to useful fuel.

So the craft will fuel up over time, but it will take a long time! (*)

57 minutes ago, marcnesium-iv said:

First question: Can this fuel transport work in principle?

Yes. The Convert-O-Trons will put the fuel into any applicable fuel tank, filling the tanks with the highest fuel priority (the ones that will be drained first by engines) first, not filling tanks that are set to "do not drain" in their PAW, and ignoring any crossfeed rules (even if you have them activated in the settings).

P.S. (*) It will take 50 times longer than if you had the big Convert-O-Tron and at least a level 0 engineer on board.
P.P.S. I play with crossfeed rules on and use the Convert-O-Tron "cheat" to re-fuel craft that can e.g. only dock via a claw. IMHO an engineer than can manage a complex refinery setup can also rig some temporary fuel hoses.

Edited March 2, 2020 by AHHans
Added P.S.

[bewing]

I think you may have a problem with the ore tanks. 

"(on the vertical beams below the Convert-O-Tron's)"

Most types of vertical beams do not allow transport ("crossflow"), which includes ore.

Did you test the drills/ISRU on the launchpad when you built this thing?

 

[marcnesium-iv]

Thank you all very much for your input!

I'll try it in the next days as I'm quite busy right now.

 

Edit:

It seems the main problem was the mining equipment not directly attached to the convert-o-tron, as mentioned by bewing. Thanks again for the help!

Edited March 8, 2020 by marcnesium-iv