0.23.5, a platform for easy modulation?

[horndgmium]

I was reading over how it will be possible to grapple asteroids with the claw. And that the claw will have the ability to recover fuel from grappled objects if any is there. To me, this means: asteroid mining. Who's to say that you can't travel around the solar system with a claw, like a Kethane miner, with the ability to leech all the fuel out of asteroids?

Because of the mining possibility, I'd certainly like to see both asteroid belts (multiple!) and planet rings with asteroids that may or may not have fuel to mine with the claw.

The way I interpreted what .23.5 will be is scattered asteroids around the system. I've come to terms with my inability to foster change at squad, but I'd like nothing more than for the ability to take this update and modify asteroid scatter and asteroid size. That could be a bar just like terrain scatter! And of course, I would probably put it on max size and scatter all of the time.

I don't know. I just think a few asteroids scattered here and there is not particularly enthralling.

[mellojoe]

There is no fuel mining, YET, in stock. However, the Kethane mod is great for mining fuel on celestial bodies. I don't know when (if) it will be updated to show kethane on asteroids. Hopefully it will, and hopefully soon after the public release.

Currently, asteroids are only in a certain area. I don't know about long term plans, but I could easily see them being added in multiple zones. The main zone is a "belt" between Kerbin and Duna (much like the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), but it wouldn't take a lot of imagination to envision a second main "belt" out near Eeloo to mimic the Kuiper belt. And even imagine a few free-range objects scattered randomly.

[Linear]

To start, it has to be kind of realistic - these kinds of Asteroids are not massively common, and this is 'NASA's doing'.

However, it should be super easy to mod the spawning of these asteroids so no worries!

[Wayfare]

It'll be interesting to see how asteroids are generated by KSP. In game they seem to be treated as parts which means they should be just a quick .cfg edit away from carrying fuel (which can then be extracted through the claw).

[AlamoVampire]

I was reading over how it will be possible to grapple asteroids with the claw. And that the claw will have the ability to recover fuel from grappled objects if any is there. To me, this means: asteroid mining. Who's to say that you can't travel around the solar system with a claw, like a Kethane miner, with the ability to leech all the fuel out of asteroids?

Because of the mining possibility, I'd certainly like to see both asteroid belts (multiple!) and planet rings with asteroids that may or may not have fuel to mine with the claw.

The way I interpreted what .23.5 will be is scattered asteroids around the system. I've come to terms with my inability to foster change at squad, but I'd like nothing more than for the ability to take this update and modify asteroid scatter and asteroid size. That could be a bar just like terrain scatter! And of course, I would probably put it on max size and scatter all of the time.

I don't know. I just think a few asteroids scattered here and there is not particularly enthralling.

According to Felipe the asteroids appear only near kerbin. Check scott manleys interview with him if you think im wrong

[Streetwind]

Keep in mind there's a reason why asteroids appear only as blips in the tracking station and do not actually exist in the world unless you start tracking them.

A whole belt with thousands of static celestial objects will utterly cripple KSP to the point where it's barely playable.

[flywlyx]

Keep in mind there's a reason why asteroids appear only as blips in the tracking station and do not actually exist in the world unless you start tracking them.

A whole belt with thousands of static celestial objects will utterly cripple KSP to the point where it's barely playable.

There is always a way to make things work, thinking about how to make it is more helpful.

The point is that ,how many asteroids we are looking for?100?1,000?10,000? Things will be much more easier when it has a limit.

[Hotblack Desiato]

in ksp, I'd place a few large asteroid-objects in the main belt, on a similar orbit like Dres (these large ones should be persistent planetlike-objects). and then add a scanning module that works in conjuction with the laboratory module. this scanning module should search asteroids like the trackingstation at KSP.

depending on the location of the scan, this could lead to science (different location of the asteroids, different asteroid-types... metal, silicates, rubble piles, komets and so on).

regarding mod-mining, since there is a mod that can alter stock parts and asteroids are just parts, I guess that it's just a minor task to turn the asteroids in flying kethane tanks.

I wonder how much science those asteroids offer, and how to get the science (take a sample, grab the asteroid, land it?).

[merendel]

Asumeing its possible for kethane to modify the code for the asteroids (asumeing they are part objects) possibly the simplest solution would be to make the asteroids into containers for a new resource. Each asteroid would spawn with some amount of "Asteroid Resources" depending on its size and modified by random chance. You go up grapple onto the asteroid and a new part thats effectively just a standard kethane converter module converts "Asteroid Resources" into standard kethane or whatever. Dont add any tanks for "Asteroid Resorces" so you cant just dock a tanker to it and pump it out and leave and that specalized new part is effectively the mining drill to harvest the rock. Once the asteroid is empty you may as well abandon it or turn it into a station or whatever.

In fact I'd love it if I could go capture a D or E class rock and turn it into a full on shipyard between kethane and Extraplanetary launchpads. Harvest the rock for fuel and ore, bits of station grappled to the rock with ship building facilities. Heck can you imagin how much easier it would be to push one of those into orbit if you could just make your own fuel supply on site? No 50 orange tanks worth of fuel just to push it into a stable orbit, just a big engien cluster on a fuel tank and a pile of mining equipment.

[Javster]

Pretty sure Kethane will update so that Kethane will be found in asteroids.

[horndgmium]

I think any computer could handle a ton of asteroids by considering them debris and them always being on rails. They are just parts after all, you don't even have to render them until you are 2.5km away, and by no means is anyone thinking of an asteroid belt with a scatter density of like > 50 asteroids per 2.5km^3. Well maybe because that would be awesome . But yeah stock they'll only appear around Kerbin, but as noted above, and .cfg and/or a plugin could be quite useful for making your own asteroid spawning rules, as well as leaving them in a certain orbit.

The odds of a probe running into an asteroid in the actual belt is less than 1:1,000,000,000. That's a billion. (Wiki)

PS: No need to be a "melting computer Kraken too much ram useage for poor 32 bit KSP" kind of debbie downer, because once again, these are parts, and you will likely only encounter ONE within HUNDREDS of kilometers CUBED. If 1000 debris on rails can work on my 6 year old laptop, so can asteroids.

Edited March 25, 2014 by horndgmium

[horndgmium]

Reading up on In-Situ resource Utilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Situ_Resource_Utilization), it's clear that water and other resources (metal oxides [notably SiO2 which composes the majority of the crust], and precious metals) can be mined from asteroids. Since Oxygen can be derived from nearly everything (but not so much H), Hydrogen can be brought along in greater quantities, which is chill because it is the lightest element and all.

Water can be converted to liquid H2 and O2 (cryogenically stored for rocket propellant) through electrolysis, and even further to H2O2 for monopropellant.

Silicates (SiO2, etc.) can be mined and separated to yield Oxygen (then stored as a liquid).

However, C-type asteroids compose 75% of all asteroids and contain water, metals, and organic compounds, making the search for fuel that much simple with the proper equipment.

If your goal, however, is precious metal mining, the other 25% of asteroids (10% with the highest density of metals like Platinum), the other two types of asteroids (S and M) will be your targets. For these, you don't need fuel conversion and storage as well as mining equipment, you just need mining capability and somewhere to put all that metal.

So the take away here (this is all IRL but I mean a mod to make this happen would never hurt [hint hint]):

75% of asteroids will be excellent targets for fuel resupply mining ops

15% useful for precious metals to sell on earth (Kerbin)

10% for bulk metal mining (such as Iron) for construction of large objects in space (buildings for example)

Interesting article: http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/type-of-asteroid-to-mine-part-3/

[merendel]

@horndgmium It does not appear from the videos we saw over the last day that the classifications the game uses have anything to do with the C S or M type classifications in that article. As far as the game is concerned the A-E ratings are merely a size rating. the higher the letter the bigger the asteroid. On the other hand resource collection mods could randomly assign C S or M to the asteroids that spawn to determine the ratios and amount of types of resources on the asteroids. Most would have a C rating and would have useable amounts of both fuel and metal resorces makeing them good station bases as you'd have everything you need asumeing EL was used along with kethane. A smaller percentage would just be big blocks of ore, useful but less valeuable if your goal was a one stop rocket shop. S's would actualy be good as well once an economy is implemented for career mode. Mining and shiping precious metals back down to planet could give your spaceprogram an infusion of capital that would be very handy indeed.

[horndgmium]

Yeah I'm just throwing out ideas that I know WON'T be incorporated with the new asteroids. But since we will soon have the asteroids, the capability for mods to do anything they want with them will surely follow as it doesn't seem very difficult (as per thread title). I actually hadn't heard about the size classification so that's definitely nice, but I had heard they'll only go up to about 30m across (although that seems quite easy to change as well). Random classification of C, S, or M based on real percentages would be nice, as well as a randomization of resources actually found inside the asteroid of that type. Like Kethane, there's no reason to assume that EVERY asteroid you encounter will be useful. EL could certainly benefit from the ability to mine ore from asteroids (M-type I think, along with C-type for fuel although both types don't have exclusively certain kinds of compounds).

And shipping those precious metals back to Kerbin would be so awesome if currency ever gets implemented into the game. Mining ships with an actual purpose!

[merendel]

30m is still a prety good sized rock. I'm also not sure if thats the actual max size. 30m is 12 orange tanks side by side and a few of the videos I've seen of D/E class sure looked bigger than that but its kinda hard to get an accurate scale referance till we can play with it ourselves. The actual dimensions of the asteroid are also rather unimportant when it comes to moveing them to where we want, its the tonage that concerns us because that impacts how much fuel we need to bring. I think 3500 tons was the number bandied about as the uper limit on the weight of E class asteroids. Thats a staggering amount of mass to try and move, I've personally never launched a ship that was half that on the launchpad. That limit was probably picked merely as a practical limit of what we could move within the scope of the mission. Short of useing mods such as KSP Interstelar with its crazy high ISP advanced propulsion options theres just no good way to move something heavier than that. Sure you could chain launch a hundred or so fuel tankers but that would be a logistical nightmare few would bother with. Theres not much point spawning asteroids the size of gilly if there is no feasable way for us to do anything with it.

[Vanamonde]

Resource mining is an idea that has been shelved for the foreseeable future, and perhaps permanently, which is why the subject has been placed on the What Not to Suggest List. Sorry folks, but closing the thread now.