Is it safe to leave a mining drill and ISRU operating unattended?

[quazarz]

I have a mining drill and ISRU on a surface outpost with plenty of radiators, but once I got a glitch where the radiators totally failed during a time warp and cooked the crew members that were sitting outside on the lawn seats. Does that ever happen while the outpost is in the background? 

[ARS]

Weird, I often left my mining outpost unattended and never had any problems like that. Maybe you need more radiators? Forgot to activate it? Or maybe it's just a glitch. I don't know, but for my 3 years playing KSP I never had such a problem. Though my mining outpost is also beyond the timewarp range since the main base is very far away, so maybe timewarping while it's still in range might cause it

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, quazarz said:

Is it safe to leave a mining drill and ISRU operating unattended?

Everything is safe if you F5 quicksave first.

I too have never had this issue. My main problem is running out of battery power and having all my drills shut off, so I have to manually turn them on again. For that reason alone, I never time warp while a mining operation is in my physics bubble.

Edited December 22, 2020 by Superfluous J

[paul_c]

Its definitely worth doing a calculation to determine how much battery power you need, then it can be left running continuously and won't shut down in the night. Also, obvs, you'll need solar power or similar to charge those batteries up again. The requirement for battery will be determined by the length of day - so its different for Mun, Minmus, Duna etc.

[bewing]

Actually, the game is built so that you are supposed to leave them operating unattended.

[king of nowhere]

5 minutes ago, bewing said:

Actually, the game is built so that you are supposed to leave them operating unattended.

especially because it would be quite hard having to stay there for weeks while something else may require your attention.

 

the safer thing is to change craft, and then time warp. isru goes fine while outside physics bubble

[AHHans]

Quote

Is it safe to leave a mining drill and ISRU operating unattended?

Yes.

3 hours ago, quazarz said:

Does that ever happen while the outpost is in the background? 

No.

Once they are outside the physics range, then the worst thing that the ISRU and drills do is to not mine enough ore / generate enough fuel. The problem you had was because you were time-warping while having the mining rig in focus. For some reason the heating and cooling calculations during time-warp are messed up, so some parts get really hot while time-warping at one speed while being fine when time-warping at another speed and/or at normal speed.

[paul_c]

The issue I've found is that if/when doing "mine xxx units of Ore and deliver it to Kerbin (orbit), you set off the equipment with a detachable ore tank but if you have another, it fills them evenly and you can't transfer it (well, I can't.....I am sure it ought to be possible though). So if my mining rig already there has say 2000U ore storage and I need to send 500 back, I need to mine it all until the tanks are full. And if I do a fuel generation too (the retriever would land with a bit of fuel and empty ore tanks; then fill up with fuel for the return trip and ore) of course, it uses up the ore in all the tanks so they will need to refill.

Getting the rig so that it doesn't stop in darkness and just time warping with everything on, is good though !

[Spricigo]

Mind you, those contracts asks for

1. mine ## units of ore at place A
2. delivery ## units of ore at place B

Since the game don't track if the ore in step 1 is the same ore in step 2, you don't need to transport ## units of ore from place A to place B. (Of course, you may do it anyway.)

14 hours ago, paul_c said:

transfer it (well, I can't.....I am sure it ought to be possible though)

AFAIK Yes, should be possible.