Best Ideas/Crafts for retrieving and returning Kethane.

[lukejohnsonmedia]

First post on the forums! (YAY) Anyway, I have been messing around with the Kethane mod and I have been able to get 2 probes into orbit around earth.

And 1 on the Mun, And also sent a ship to drill and retrieve it but crashed upon taking off of the Mun. But I'm having extreme trouble figuring out how to drill and reuse the kethane, And how to mine it from Kerbin.

Post Below either some ideas or advice on kethane mining, OR post pictures of your crafts/mission screenshots of what you used to complete your mission.

Also post some craft files if you like.

Trying to help people that are wanting to kethane mine. (including myself)

HELP MEH OUT PEOPLE!

[Tydeth]

One option is to build an Orbital Kethane Storage/Refinery Station over whatever body you are mining. This way, in the case of the Mun, you wouldn't have to haul the stuff back to Kerbin all the time.

For your refinery, you'll want to make sure your converter has direct access to a fuel/oxidizer tank, as Kethane, Xenon, and Monoprop can go anywhere but LF/Ox must have a proper connection, be it by placing the converter on a stack with a fuel tank, or by running lines. This way, you guarantee your fuel conversion will work; I am not sure how the converter treats docking ports on stations with fuel tanks elsewhere.

[PringleMan]

In terms of engineering, the easiest would be a fuel station in kerbal orbit, a station in Minmas orbit, a lander to harvest on minmas, and an orbital freighter ferrying between the two. Minmas has such a low escape velocity it is really easy to get kethane into orbit. Once in orbit it is really simple to use nuclear engines as a fuel efficient way to get to and from Kerbin.

[OgreMagi]

I went with the miner/processor/refueler MPR, as one unit and a fuel tug ( large fuel pod with LVN atomic rocket) to move the pods.

the MPR is a lander with 4 kethan pods 4 fuel pods a single processor and the usual assortment of pods, I used a 4 LVN skyhook rocket system and added 5 Large solar panels and a couple large batteries.

I land and full up the MPR make a full load of fuel and max my kethan, launch to orbit and wait on the fuel tugs, fill them processing the remaining kethane to fill my tanks so I can land again then send the pods back to kerbin.

Mun works out the best all in all, Minus is a low energy return but it take a lot of delta v to get there, while the mun is higher gravity it think it is a better trade off as it is closer.

working on a similar system for eve, duna and plane to take it all to jool