Show off your Kethane Mining Designs!!

[Cuel]

I needed a Kethane miner for this battlecruiser "Fenris" which has around 6000 delta-V if fully fueled, so I made "Hel".

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It can refuel ~2500 liters of LFO + 600 units of RCS fuel per landing if done on a moon.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Cuel

[Mokmo]

I recently blogged about getting taken over by the spirit of Jeb and, well, what happened was I went and decided to just land the 500T station on Minmus and refuel it stood on top of my mining craft...

*snip*

Can you see the kerbals I put there to show scale?

i can never find a spot that's less than 3 degrees inclination on Minmus, how in the world did this stand ?...

[John FX]

i can never find a spot that's less than 3 degrees inclination on Minmus, how in the world did this stand ?...

The dark areas on Minmus are very very flat, like salt flats flat. Try to land on one of those and you`re set. I personally think that the sizes of the Kethane resource areas are pitiful. Sometimes I can empty a reserve and not even fill my craft. That is not realistic. So I use Kethane Debugger and make a resouce wherever I land. I like to assume Minmus has dark areas of kethane rich reserves and I land there.

It wobbled A LOT (even with landing speed 0.5m/s). I had to spend about 20-30 seconds just bouncing over the landscape using progressively less RCS and ASAS whilst bouncing, then just ASAS then I let it settle. I was surprised it only needed 35T of fuel to lift 600T into a 50Km orbit with 300Kn of NERVA. I may make a super miner that weighs about that full and cut down on flight losses. Then I`ll carry a good amount of fuel to orbit each time (Well over 7 full orange tanks this trip) especially if I lose the crew space for 40 kerbals...

[Sapphire]

This is my airship-based mining gear that I use to fill up my big Kethane storage unit that I keep near the space center.

[John FX]

Ok, I`ve done it now. I have made a mining lander that can empty any kethane deposit in a single mining session. It just ate 265K and 360K of kethane and it still wants more. When full it weighs 901.1T...

I present The MegaMiner

[Pontiac]

Freak'n incredible guys and gals (If they exist in this thread).

I'll post my cheated ships up. Been working on refinements the last couple of days.

[Sapphire]

Because I didn't post it here yet, this is the big storage unit that I keep near KSC (I recently moved it off a couple kilometers to get rid of the lag), along with a super heavy miner to get at a big deposit right under the space center. Moving them away was not fun; The miner weighs something like 150 tons, and it took an hour to drive it over to its new location, because it's got a top speed of 1.3m/s. The storage unit was much worse. It weighs roughly 350 tons, and had to be moved by airship. I had to reinforce my airship because it kept tearing apart when carrying it.

[Amphiprion]

Holy crap Sapphire, why is it all so green?? freaking amazing dude, what mods are you using there? is that a vtol dropping off that thing with the treads?? sho!

Here is my revised Keth operation.. before I used to have a depot in space and ferry to and from the surface.. now my entire station is the ship that goes to the surface to fill up with keth...

I'm using the B-9 aerospace and KW rocketry with this ship..

I got it to minimus from the kerbin launch pad by using the Sabre Multimode turbines, then dropping those once close to kerb orbit.

Dropped in on a 350,000L kethane deposit and sucked it completely dry before I got fully topped up.. rediculous I know..

[BJ Quest]

That is a BIG Ship

Ok, I`ve done it now. I have made a mining lander that can empty any kethane deposit in a single mining session. It just ate 265K and 360K of kethane and it still wants more. When full it weighs 901.1T...

I present The MegaMiner

It took me 2 ship/miners to deplete one kethane field ... so I had to move on to another field to complete the refill. The KSL-1A landing at a second site:

KSL-1A and KSL-1B are both refiled and orbiting Minmus ready for the next step. At the moment 2 BIG ships are enough for current mission(s) :-) PS: It took 5 sunrises to complete the refills. A bit slow but acceptable.

BJ Quest

Edited June 13, 2013 by BJ Quest

[Sapphire]

Holy crap Sapphire, why is it all so green?? freaking amazing dude, what mods are you using there? is that a vtol dropping off that thing with the treads?? sho!

It's actually not a VTOL, it's the cabin, fuel storage, and drill assembly mounted on the giant treads. Here's a different view.

I just have intakes on it because this is my logic: "If you don't need to launch it into space, weight doesn't matter so put as many aesthetic parts into it as you want." The engines are on there as more of a roleplaying device, meant to be Kethane vents in case of an emergency.

I use quite a few mods. I think the ones I'm using in my Kethane operations are:

-B9 Aerospace (obviously)

-Hooligan Labs Airship mod

-Aviation Lights (aka the fancy green ones)

-Kethane (omg no wai)

-Rubber Band Inc. Caterpillar Tracks

Edited June 13, 2013 by Sapphire

[Amphiprion]

Hoy!!! hahahahaah insaaaaaaane amount of keth drills you have there , your fps must be past the toilet, past the poo farm, recycled into drinking water.

John FX, ditto on landing that monstrosity with **** fps, must of been hard.

Sapphire, your designs are rediculous... love that airship.

Cuel, Feels like your battleship needs some wings, it looks like an amputee.

Landed on Moho, This miner landed on a 470k deposit and tapped out with 45k remaining. 420ishk one shot.

I have used as least parts as possible... I do love my fps..

It needs larger Atomic engines than the ones in KSPX as the current KW rocketry "wildcat" ones have a ****ty 370 isp in vacuum.

Weighs in fully loaded @ 1041Tons.

Note the amount of fuel it can hold in the top right..

Edited June 13, 2013 by Amphiprion

[astroadrian99]

This is the Hulk. Anyone that played EVE would get it

It mines into a kethane silo consisting of 15 of the largest sizes kethane tanks, connected to this rig with the KAS winches you can see on its ventral section.

I don't have pictures of the silo, or the orbital fuel depot made from 14 jumbo 64's, Nor of the tanker that brings up 4 full orange tanks from the surface of Vall to the tanker, but they are all visible in the recordings on twitch of my streams.. If anyone wants to see some of them I can run through them and get you the time stamps and episode numbers to see them in construction and transit to Vall.

Are those solar panels a mod or did you make em.

[Sapphire]

Are those solar panels a mod or did you make em.

Those panels are the Balka solar wings from the KOSMOS Station Parts Pack.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/kosmos-tks-spacecraft/

[astroadrian99]

Those panels are the Balka solar wings from the KOSMOS Station Parts Pack.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/kosmos-tks-spacecraft/

Ok thanks for the help

[chrischambers]

Because I didn't post it here yet, this is the big storage unit that I keep near KSC (I recently moved it off a couple kilometers to get rid of the lag), along with a super heavy miner to get at a big deposit right under the space center. Moving them away was not fun; The miner weighs something like 150 tons, and it took an hour to drive it over to its new location, because it's got a top speed of 1.3m/s. The storage unit was much worse. It weighs roughly 350 tons, and had to be moved by airship. I had to reinforce my airship because it kept tearing apart when carrying it.

I do love the view of the Drill platform,

if you don't mind would you mind listing the mod's that you used to create the Drilling Platform.

[Sapphire]

I do love the view of the Drill platform,

if you don't mind would you mind listing the mod's that you used to create the Drilling Platform.

I made a list a couple posts up.

[John FX]

Hoy!!! hahahahaah insaaaaaaane amount of keth drills you have there , your fps must be past the toilet, past the poo farm, recycled into drinking water.

John FX, ditto on landing that monstrosity with **** fps, must of been hard.

Sapphire, your designs are rediculous... love that airship.

Cuel, Feels like your battleship needs some wings, it looks like an amputee.

Landed on Moho, This miner landed on a 470k deposit and tapped out with 45k remaining. 420ishk one shot.

I have used as least parts as possible... I do love my fps..

It needs larger Atomic engines than the ones in KSPX as the current KW rocketry "wildcat" ones have a ****ty 370 isp in vacuum.

Weighs in fully loaded @ 1041Tons.

Note the amount of fuel it can hold in the top right..

How did you get that to Moho? Got any images of your lifter?

[Amphiprion]

How did you get that to Moho? Got any images of your lifter?

It uses the sabre engines on the outside with kw rocketry wildcats in the centre. sabre's are decoupled once orbit is reached.

I tried making one with all sabre engines, but the centre engines overheat quite fast, more than 60% thrust and they overheat.. still working on that..

refuel at minimus then set off for moho.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Amphiprion

[Alpha372]

My all in one drilling and refinery rig

[intidragon]

Wow. . . I wish my designs were as creative and as cool as you guys. Mine's just feeding off of simplicity in looks. I call it the Gneisenau Kethane Miner.

It's a self-sustaining kethane miner, converter, and light tanker. And although it's a bigger package. . . It's not as good-looking as your creations.

[Jeep]

So I thought I'd show you my Kethane Mining station design's.

The "tug" picks up the filled tankers which are completely mobile, and takes them up to the orbiting fuel station to fill up tanks. then returns rinse repeat.

each tanker is very mobile, has omni wheels on it, so it can winch itself up and down, also they can turn 360 on the spot, and move sideways.

The tug has a magic lift ram, so it can also adjust its height. each tanker docks with the tug via a docking port ontop of them.

How did you get the kethane tank on wheels up to the Mun? Im not a pro builder but I have something similar to this and cant get it to the Mun without something happening. It mainly goes down hill coming up near final turn to get into orbit myself nor mechjeb cant control it just spins out of control ( probably cause top heavy )

[Amphiprion]

How did you get the kethane tank on wheels up to the Mun? Im not a pro builder but I have something similar to this and cant get it to the Mun without something happening. It mainly goes down hill coming up near final turn to get into orbit myself nor mechjeb cant control it just spins out of control ( probably cause top heavy )

Hi jeep,

I managed to stack 2 tankers(both mobile rover tankers with wheels) ontop of each other ontop of the launch vehicle.. I used a crapload of steel framework and struts to keep them in place and to stop them wavering about.

I found the method of using rovers and going up and down way too much work and time, and prefer using gargantuan fuel ships that go down and suck a 420k keth deposit dry then go up and either act as a refueling depo from there, or as an engine stage to take other craft to other planets.

Here's a shot of my SSTO plane, and two of these Mid sized kethane miner-refueler-engine docked to it, ready for an interplanetary voyage..

[Vonar]

my automated Kethane Miner approaching the Kethane Station orbiting the Mun.

[Amphiprion]

Vonar, Is that completely automated? like do you have to do anything for it to come up and refuel? can you just sit in the station and watch it come up and dock??

would be cool if that was the case..

and something that would be nice to have enabled and available once you reach a certain milestone in the game.

[willow]

Here's a shot of my SSTO plane, and two of these Mid sized kethane miner-refueler-engine docked to it, ready for an interplanetary voyage..

I love the SSTO, are the wings on it also from the B9 pack?