Usefulness of kethane mining?

[Pipcard]

I see people establishing kethane mines on Minmus or the Mun. But do they serve any practical purpose?

Edited October 9, 2013 by Pipcard

[Rage097]

Kethane serves a excellent purpose.

Let's say you are planning a grand tour, on your space craft you can attactch a scanner and the parts for the collection and refinment of Kethane. With this, you can fly to everyplanet and refuel by simply orbiting several times and drilling at your landing site. No need for refueling missions or space craft retirement.

[Pipcard]

Kethane serves a excellent purpose.

Let's say you are planning a grand tour, on your space craft you can attactch a scanner and the parts for the collection and refinment of Kethane. With this, you can fly to everyplanet and refuel by simply orbiting several times and drilling at your landing site. No need for refueling missions or space craft retirement.

I already know about the usefulness of that (in-situ resource utilization for reusable landers on interplanetary "grand tour" missions). But what I'm talking about is kethane bases on the Mun or Minmus. The ones showcased in this thread. Are those useful?

[Rage097]

I'd assume so. The Mun and Minmus can be 'Pit stops' for missions that would require refueling. If any other reason fails, use this one: "Because why the heck not?"

[Psycix]

It is easier to bring a large amount of fuel to LKO from the Mun than it is from Kerbin. Especially since you the tanker craft is easily reusable.

[BostLabs]

It is like the gas stations outside the big city. Useful if you are out that way and didn't fill up before leaving the city.

[jwenting]

it's an addon for a game. That makes it by definition useless in any practical sense as games are effectively useless, a waste of time in the grand scheme of life as a constant repeat of eat, gather food, mate, and sleep.

As to being useful within the context of that useless game (but oh so fun), that's been answered already even though it seems to not be the answer you were looking for.

And of course it's within the context of that game useful as a goal you can set yourself, to create an efficient mining/refining operation that produces more fuel than you have to expend to keep it running.

[Superfluous J]

I see people establishing kethane mines on Minmus or the Mun. But do they serve any practical purpose?

I set up a mining base on Minmus. The idea is to launch an interplanetary ship from Kerbin with enough fuel to get there, and enough (empty, from launch) tanks to - if they were full, get to the planet I'm heading to. I'll show up at Minmus on fumes, fill up the tanks, then drop back to Kerbin and use all that potential engery turned kinetic to get a nice boost in speed for my transfer. There are about 20 steps I'm skipping in my description but that's the gist.

Without a mining base and refueling station, that ship would have to bring all the mining equipment with it. That would diminish if not outweigh any benefit from using kethane-turned-fuel for the interplanetary burns.

[Arbolus]

It's much easier to get a heavy mass from Minmus to LKO than it is to get that same mass from Kerbin's surface to LKO. So, if I'm building an interplanetary ship or something else that needs a lot of delta-v, it's usually most efficient to only give it enough fuel to reach LKO and to then refuel it from kethane mines elsewhere in the Kerbin system.

[DMagic]

Kethane refineries on the Mun or Minmus can be nice, but really I think they are mostly just cool to make. It's not like we have to pay anything, so in a lot of cases it might be easier to just send up more fuel from Kerbin.

But mines on other planets can be really useful. Like on one of Jool's moons to act as a base for operations there. Or like I did in my Moho mission to support by stations and bases there. Sending fuel from Kerbin to Moho is a huge amount of trouble, so that Kethane refinery saved a lot of time and effort.

[Kielm]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52109-Resource-Expansion-Mine-all-the-things!?p=686292#post686292

Work in progress but it's fairly easy to add new resources to Kethane to make those stations and bases more 'useful'. Stock Kethane is good, but only really intended for making ships refuellable. I'm trying to make a reason for big refining stations with lots of solar power - if you have any suggestions please let me know!

[noobsrtoast]

kethane can be used to establish a structured economy on servers in KMP as well, for example: say someone wants some kethane from you or a piece of minmus for mining in your "territory" per se. you could exchange it too them for mining turf on a planet or moon they're currently mining on. It sounds silly but I've heard players can get pretty defensive over their kethane stocks even if they're trying to claim the whole planet for themselves. another thing kethane could be used for is to establish colonies on another planet, you could make it so you don't have to start at the space center everytime to launch a ship only to add to a for sure growing fleet. I have a prototype in working where docking ports are used to create a fully mobile off planet launch pad and tests are going well. the only thing I ever have to return to kerbin for is to launch a new vessel then that vessel can operate solely from minmus without every worrying about running out of fuel and saving a hell of a lot of fuel escaping the kerbin system in the first place. kethane has many uses

[KerbMav]

Always in for a bit of necrosis: In my current career save Kethane (only) is what makes nuke engines glow.

[Tery215]

Kethane is essentially an alternative to sending fuel up there.

The benefit is, the farther away you are from Kerbin, the more fuel effective it is to gather fuel there instead of signaling Kerbin that you need more and then waiting several months.