Kethane Extractor Vehicle Designs

[Filippe999]

Hi, lately i've been trying to make a working design for an unmanned extractor vehicle, that would land on the planet, fills itself up with kethane then orbit and rendezvouz back to the station where said kethane would be refined into fuel for the probe and the station engines, but i've been failing to get a working model(a model that can de-orbit, extract, re-orbit and rendesvouz).

Are there any tips for said designs? most of my designs either run out of fuel on landing or just can't reorbit again, of course, bringing more fuel over would cause the Vehicle to become much heavier, but not bringing much seems to make it's mission, impossible to do, i've been trying to make it on Kerbin, where i cheat fuel for the vehicle to get in orbit, then deactivate the cheat and de-orbit, try to land on a kethane spot(which mechjeb2 seems to be very bad at doing so, i had to do manually with just smart ass), then land run out of fuel at 2k altitude, i've been using the very efficient 500 power engines from KOSMOS, as they hnave enough power to lift my probe and are as efficient as an orbital 2.5m engine from KW Rocketry.

BTW got modular fuels so i can adapt other tanks for kethane too, any designs that are working for you? any ideas that might help my goal? anything you would like to discuss about kethane that might be constructive? please reply, after all it's a discussion thread .

thanks. filippe999.

[Hodo]

I have a couple that aren't unmanned but do the job you are talking about.

My Kethane rover.

My Kethane mining base.

My refining station and the kethane transport shuttle.

SVO-9, almost all of my SVOs are kethane mining and refining craft. This pick is from Ike.

And the first working SSTO VTOL and mining design I made.

My only wish for the kethane mod is that they add a center line or inline drill. So I can mount it in the middle of something.

Edited October 30, 2013 by Hodo

[Mokmo]

First of all...

Which planet? There's a big diference between mining Kerbin or Minmus.

Since you're landing on a Kethane deposit, you could consider putting a small converter somewhere on the ship. Converts while mining and if you leave it on converts as soon as fuel is burned.

So here's what i used in 0.21 on Minmus

-four 16k kethane tanks around a 3.75m LFO tank (this one is from KW),

-plenty of large rtg modules (thus the little solars, but you can work however you want), There's 4 ASRG and 2 CSRG from RLA Power Generation, and the XXL RTG from Korda (found it on Spaceport, probably still works on 0.22 but not updated for tech tree) and they've got enough power to make 2 big drill work. The Converter is the one i forgot when making this, so with it battery drains about 2/3 of the way into the drilling cycle. There are better mods for power generation now, like Near Future that has a 250 Ec/s generator that could power 10 big drills...

-enough RCS to dock this

-way too many reaction wheels (you actually have to turn them off or it'll tear anyhing you dock it to apart).

-2.5 m Orbital Berthas (NovaPunch) under the kethane tanks, and they give a ridiculously good TWR on Minmus (around 10 when the ship is all full)

-And of ourse on top you see the mini converter.

-The two drills take about 4 hours to fill her up, but could carry four if you can power them.

[Filippe999]

thanks, that is that SSTO made in SPH?? what type of crazy staging goes into that? that's amazing, but thanks for the tips, tomorrow i'm going to try my updated designs and post then here for evaluation.

[Hodo]

thanks, that is that SSTO made in SPH?? what type of crazy staging goes into that? that's amazing, but thanks for the tips, tomorrow i'm going to try my updated designs and post then here for evaluation.

Which one?

I know all of mine are pretty simple staging. I know my SVO-9 has 2 stages and 8 action keys set. The stages are only to separate the VTOL engines from the flight engines.