Show off your Kethane Mining Designs!!

[Amphiprion]

I think its actually attached to the large Keth tank behind it.

[EdwardKu]

The drill is attached to the big tank. The rover is for when I need to extend the KAS past 50 metres.

[Amphiprion]

That Rover in the Background looks awesome, can we have a close-up PLX.

Edited July 20, 2013 by Amphiprion

[Evan]

Anyone accomplish a mining rig on the Laythe oceans?

[Captain Sierra]

Anyone accomplish a mining rig on the Laythe oceans?

I know how to support oceanic kethane mining, but I myself have never actually done it. Haven't gotten probes to Lathe yet and my keth deposits on Kerbin are too far away to be economical.

This is where I learned how to do an underwater operation: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/40050-Mining-Underwater-Kethane

[Amphiprion]

So with .21 out, As soon as I get the mods I want, I will make an offshore drilling platform on Laythe. I'm shooting for something that resembles an earth-like oil extraction platform. If anyone else has done something similar as Evan suggested, please feel free to post it.

Loving all of .21. its gr8

Majir was quick with his update to .21 hey, wow! If you notice any bugs, please let us know.

[Cashen]

This was my specialized Minmus Kethane Rig. Could extract 64000L of Kethane and bring it back to Kerbin orbit for processing at a propellant depot.

I have designs of an even larger one with a capacity of 96000L

[Immashift]

Here's what I'm currently working on. Still need to do ladders and rework the fuel lines & struts.

It's LKO capable with no assistance. I set that as a benchmark to land on most of the planets/moons.

Converter and drills are sort of hidden, so is power generation. But it's all there.

The purpose of it is to act as both a lander and a rover, capable of refueling its mothership, which will be taking the grand tour

[Amphiprion]

So, I built this Keth Rig for ocean drilling applications.

I've got most of its issues ironed out, except for the following.

1. cannot get the drill to sink

2. cannot get KAS anchors to act like Grappling hooks.

Without this, It won't work.

Meh..

Edited July 26, 2013 by Amphiprion

[Captain Sierra]

Most stuff in KSP is bouyant. Try creating a new part by doing some .cfg editing on something to make it basically a giant weight, then add that to the bottom of your drill. Once it is on the seafloor, use the KAS (with grappling hook, not anchor) to latch it down and start drilling. Anchors were meant to serve as anchors for airships, not boats. You could always just make them weigh a sh**-ton if you wanted to.

[Captain Sierra]

My first successful kethane operation: The Ketholander mk 1.

Now I have extraplanetary launch pads and have found a deposit of ore and kethane overlapped just south of the equator on the Mun. This is the start of the ship I'll be sending to it towing modules and other stuff for a full scale land operation (kethane first, then EPLP)

The ship, the Lazarus!

[painking]

I hope we can keep this thread going. I'm wanting to start my own Kethane base but I've a creative mental block at the moment, would totally love some pictures to get the gears spinning.

[Amphiprion]

Most stuff in KSP is bouyant. Try creating a new part by doing some .cfg editing on something to make it basically a giant weight, then add that to the bottom of your drill. Once it is on the seafloor, use the KAS (with grappling hook, not anchor) to latch it down and start drilling. Anchors were meant to serve as anchors for airships, not boats. You could always just make them weigh a sh**-ton if you wanted to.

I wanted to anchor the seagoing keth drilling platform with the sinkability of the KAS anchor, but the grappability of the Kas Grappling Hook.

The anchor sinks, but the grappling hook does not, So I tried the following:

1. changing the mass of the grappling hook to 10,000

2. moving in the modules from .cfg that allows the functionality of the grapple into a copied anchor .cfg

3. moving 2. the other way round.

none of these have worked so far, Will have to keep plugging away at it when I have the stamina again..

I also tried attaching the mini structural steel bar to a kas connector, and attaching a whole lot of anchors to that with a grapple at the bottom.. no joy..

UPDATE: adding mass to the original grappling hook is working now for some reason.. I have sinking grappling hooks.. splendid.

UPDATE 2: The grappling hooks will not grapple underwater, even with collision force at 0

Edited July 27, 2013 by Amphiprion

[Immashift]

@Amphiprion - Your Single Stage to Duna plane. I'd love to see how the wings are put together. I just cannot for the life of me get any decent wing shapes out of the B9 pack.

I'm testing out a variant of your design. I wanna see how much stuff I can actually land it on. Instead of an arm with a drill, I'm using a small cargo bay with all my kethane stuff stowed away. Apparently the drill works through the floor of the plane.

Grand tour in a spaceplane... I think it'll work. Especially since you gave me the idea of the aerospike on the front for lifting the nose in a vacuum. Might take it a step further and make the thing VTOL off of moons. We'll see.

EDIT: I wrote down a problem in this edit I was hoping for an answer to, but I solved it myself already. Suffice it to say that on large planes, the weight of landing gear, and especially an aerospike on the nose of the plane can actually make it sort of imbalanced. Especially the TT multiwheels landing gear. Stuff is heavy... I solved the problem by putting RCS tanks on the top of the plane about equal to the mass of all the wheels and stuff combined. Plane holds a steady pitch now Still need better wing designs though.

Current design (clickable):

Edited July 27, 2013 by Immashift

[Amphiprion]

@ Imma - I'll take some screenshots for you with a descrip

How much stuff you can land it on? like how many planets?

Ooooh VTOL off moons, I look forward to that, Havn't seen it done in B9.

Cool looking plane, and neat keth layout there..

I would test out that drill to see if it makes it to the floor..

[Rune]

I've updated my kethane stuff for 0.21, so I might as well show off a bit.

First, the light SSTO "scout" for those places with an atmosphere to work with (i.e. Laythe), or just to make the trip in something easy to fly. I use it as a kind of prospector:

But that's not much to look at. When I'm serious about exploiting a kethane deposit, I send on of these:

My kethane stack. In the front you have a nice hab/emergency return vehicle, to take care of the mining crew. In the middle, the biggest fuel depot a Nova will lift comfortably. And bringing up the rear (and launched separately), a big kethane miner with enough rocket oomph to make it form kerbin's surface to orbit with a little help form a few SRB's, and that can use just two nukes to get awesome fuel efficiency (at a lousy 0.2 T/W, mind you, but about 7.7km/s if you can lift it off). The idea is clear: land on low gravity moons, lift a lot of fuel, store it on orbit for other ships to use, rinse and repeat. The kethane miner also has a couple of independent RCS-powered probes to scan two places at the same time, or in case you "misplace" one, to take care of all your scanning needs.

And if the worst happens, you can salvage a couple of engine nacelles, stick them in the hab module, and take up to 5 kerbals safely home. I'm told that kind of matters now

Rune. Let's go get some green!

Edited July 27, 2013 by Rune

[Amphiprion]

The idea is clear: land on low gravity moons, lift a lot of fuel, store it on orbit for other ships to use, rinse and repeat.

This.. A good idea, one that I employ. Awesome + Unique ship Rune

[Captain Sierra]

Amphiprion, as for your sea rig, sink the entire drill all at once. Once it hits bottom, eject the grappling hook you should have on it's bottom. It should latch on. Also, boost the ejection force to get stronger grab to the seafloor.

[Immashift]

@Amphiprion - The plane isn't QUITE done yet. I have yet to reach orbit. It's made it out of the atmosphere, but it had some control issues I've worked out. Should be good to test orbit now.

As for how much I can land it on, I'm not sure. Moons absolutely, Laythe / Duna absolutely. Tylo.... Unsure. It may or may not have the delta V to do it.

The problem with VTOLs in my experience, is that I can perfectly balance them in SPH, but when I actually get out there and fly it, it makes it a couple minutes, and then the fuel imbalance eventually overcomes pod torque / SAS and it hopelessly tips backwards or forwards. So I can balance the plane to VTOL OFF of a planet's surface with a full fuel load before it converts to rear engine flight, but a VTOL LANDING coming in from interplanetary space with barely any fuel left is incredibly hard to balance. Even if I somehow balanced it for running on fumes... then with a full load it's imbalanced.

The best way I can think of to land a plane as big as mine on a body with no atmosphere is to come in butt first, use the main engines angled retrograde to kill velocity, and then land as gently as possible on the landing gear rolling backwards. My plane has gear on the tail for precisely this maneuver. I have yet to test this out though.

As for the drill. Sitting on the runway, the drill goes through the floor, into the ground and has the drilling animation. Though I need to fly to a kethane deposit on Kerbin and see if it actually picks it up, I do believe it will.

Anyway, yeah screens of your wing construction would be awesome. You can see in my last post I'm using the ginormous wings. Though they give tons of lift, they're a bit big for my taste. Just make it harder to roll the craft around in space.

EDIT:

Well, I tested my revised version of the interplanetary kethane plane, and it made it to orbit With absolutely zero fuel remaining. I didn't do a good job circularizing so I blame it on my own ineptitude that the plane is in this somewhat eccentric orbit, but it's orbit nonetheless. Now to refuel it and attempt a mun landing.

(clickable)

We were talking about VTOL on the plane - I thought I'd share this - my only successful VTOL kethane lander to date. Hovered a few feet above the KSC runway for 2.5 minutes till fuel imbalance overcame torque. More than enough time to take off of a moon and switch to the back engines only for horizontal flight:

The vertical rendition of that - LKO capable in one stage, scrapped for two reasons - A) Part count induced lag, Jeb's fat head couldn't squeeze past the couplers:

Edited July 27, 2013 by Immashift

[Amphiprion]

@Captain- I shall try what you suggested there, thanks.

@Immashift- If you are having balancing problems with your VTOL, dload the mod, TAC fuel balancer, It keeps your tank % split evenly among all your tanks so your CG won't drift too much. I've never made a mission ready Vtol before, but I have screwed around with them a bit...

Will eventually get screens, have to re-download mods for them.

All the best for that VTOL.

[Immashift]

@Amphiprion - Already way ahead of you sir! I saw TAC got updated TODAY for 21.1 and immediately grabbed it.

Started my grand tour, and am using it on my lander

One thing I DISLIKE about this lander is its base isn't very wide. I may restart the tour with a larger lander capable of A) Holding piles more fuel, and a landing gear base at least 3-4x as big as this one. This thing's first landing was.... rough. I used the rover then to mark a flat spot to land at, and that works reasonably well.

[Amphiprion]

@ Captain Sierra- Thank you for that tip, I've managed to get hooks grappled onto the seafloor. I'm still having issues with them snapping when cranking the oil rig down, I have adjusted breakingforce +breakingtorque on the winches/connectors/grappling hooks. What other element can I adjust to stop the snapping from occuring??

The break is specifically happening between the Connector and the winch its connected to ( this is the one that ejects when its at the bottom of the seafloor with the grapple hook, so its the connector connected to the BACK of the winch).

@ Immashift, My VTOL I made today looks very similar to yours. This one is an SSTO (Sabre's are OP).

I managed to take off and land the VTOL on my keth rig, but because the KAS winches are not applying downward force on the bouyant pylons, the rig tipped over

Nice keth Lander there

Did someone say something about a Lander that can hold more fuel?

This Keth Moon hopper devours 2,000,000L of keth to statiate its appetite

It was launched from kerbin with all its tanks emptied in order for LKO to be achieved.

Edited July 28, 2013 by Amphiprion

[Captain Sierra]

Amphiprion, Part of the problem is your rig is very high. Realistic looking, but not parctical by KSP physics. What I would suggest is a flatter, lower rig. Also, do not try and whinch the whole rig down, that will never work. What I would suggest is once you are grappled to the seafloor, make sure the winch suspending the drill is let slack and then winch the drill down. As for stability, try a larger, flatter rig with the landing pad in the middle and drills on the edges so they can serve both as drills and anchors. Then add your refining equipment and storage tanks in whatever space is left.

One question, how did you get that rig to the water?

[Immashift]

Going back to mostly stock with this one. Lander capable of reaching Tylo's surface and mining Kethane, and an IP puller design capable of reaching any planet.

Full redesign of my grand tour ship for less mods and less parts. Interestingly enough it should have piles more ÃŽâ€v than my original design.

[Captain Sierra]

Going back to mostly stock with this one. Lander capable of reaching Tylo's surface and mining Kethane, and an IP puller design capable of reaching any planet.

Full redesign of my grand tour ship for less mods and less parts. Interestingly enough it should have piles more ÃŽâ€v than my original design.

<SNIP>

Reminds me of my Lazarus. Also of puller design and by itself has over 8000 dV. With fully loaded down kethane tanks, it still has over 4500. This is without payload. It tows modules out to planets to set up bases, space stations, whatever I need. These dV stats come with it loaded with the megatug, a fuel tanker module, a kethane tanker module, and an RCS tanker module, the standard setup I plan to use for setting up a base.