How Does Kethane Drilling Work?

[starkllr]

I mean on a practical level - what parts exactly do I need, and where do they need to go, in order to drill for kethane, turn it into useful fuel, and pump it into a tank that's attached to a ship, etc? Do I need fuel lines, etc?

I've put detectors on satellites and found deposits on Minimus, and I can get a lander there, but I'm not sure exactly how to equip it to make the process work.

Are there any tutorial videos showing the process? Thanks!

[HoY]

The core basics of a Kethane mining op is a lander, equipped with a kethane tank, at least 1 kethane drill installed near the bottom so that when it is deployed it will penetrate the ground beneath you. You will want a power supply, and with the newest version of kethane there is a new generator part available. It will work wonderfully for a small op. next you will need a liquid fuel and oxidizer tank and a kethane converter. This will get you going, but you'll probably want a method to take the fuel from your rig to another ship or vessel of some sort. You can use stock docking ports and dock the craft on the surface, or you can use kerbal attachment system to connect the two crafts with a cable and use standard fuel transfer methods via this link.

There are some big rigs and tiny rigs you can build, it all depends on what you want to fuel or where you want to do it. Kethane mining and converting also works at time warp

I also recommend this thread if you have trouble with getting fuel to flow properly from a converter

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/35664-Kethane-Usage-and-Proper-Fuel-Routing

[Sephta]

It's not that difficult, actually:

1. Make a lander with a Kethane tanks and sensors and some drills - and enough electricity to run the drills. The small converter is practical, because you can refill your own craft (means you have to have less tanks!)

2. Land on a kethane deposit

3. Activate the drills and wait until your craft is fully loaded up (and your fuel is replenished)

4. ship your haul back to wherever you need it.

Some general tips:

If you stack a fuel tank with a converter, you don't need fuel lines, if you need some, make sure, the lines run FROM the tank TO the converter.

Kethane is like electricity - you can access it throughout the ship

The conversion rate is not very good - if you can manage it, convert it to the fuel you need on the ground and haul your end product up in orbit. This is much more efficient than getting Kethane itself into orbit.

Most of the mining vessels are designed for low gravity moons - to keep the dV cost as low as possible. Therefore the most mining vessels also use nerva engines.

[Psycho0124]

Yep, pretty much what Hoy said.

1. A drill that can extend into the surface (test it out on the launch pad to see how it works).

2. Any size kethane tank anywhere on the craft. No special placement or connection needed.

3. A converter. Can be in the same stack as your fuel tanks and it will work fine. You can also have it in a seperate stack, just run your fuel lines to it. It consumes "empty fuel tank space" so it should be downstream of your outboard tanks.

4. Power to run it all. A gigantor array or pair of them works great for most kethane setups. Less power just means more time to convert. You can convert at up to 100x time compression.

[HoY]

The conversion rate is not very good - if you can manage it, convert it to the fuel you need on the ground and haul your end product up in orbit. This is much more efficient than getting Kethane itself into orbit.

Keep in mind that two updates ago Kethane is now more dense and produces more fuel per unit than before. Twice as much I believe so that its not clear any longer if one method is more efficient than another. That was the reason for the change, so that everyone wasn't forced to all do it the exact same as everyone else

[DMagic]

If you want to test a kethane miner design (or just familiarize yourself with how the concept works) you can use the kethane debugger tool to create a deposit directly under the KSC. There should be a link for the debugger part on the kethane thread somewhere. Just attach the debugger to your vessel and launch. You can then use it to show the current kethane deposits, create a new random set of deposits, or create a deposit under your current location (be warned, this will reset all of your current deposit information, including what you have already discovered on Minmus, meaning you will have to rescan the moon).

If you are familiar with persistence file editing you can just fill up the kethane tanks on the launch pad, this way you can avoid making any changes to your existing deposit information. You can then test your setup for conversion, docking to other landers, how much power you need, and so forth (and really there's no need to test drilling, a drill anywhere on the vessel will fill up a kethane tank anywhere else on the vessel).

There's another thread here on bleeding out fuel from tanks on the launch pad, which can help in determining if your conversion setup works.

Edited June 19, 2013 by DMagic

[starkllr]

Thanks for all the advice - I'm looking forward to trying it out!

[zanzibar196]

Since this question is in regards to a specific mod... it would logically be better answered in the actual mod thread, instead of "How to" for vanilla KSP... Just saying...