kethane, how much can you mine

[OgreMagi]

I been playing around with the kethane mod and have decided to try to mine the entire Mun of its kethane and place it into Kerbal orbit...

My heavy miner can draw a large amount of kethane and process it so I decided to see hwo far I could take it.

My plan is to open a new sandbox mod and build my ships, a miner /processor and a Mun to Kerbal transport and build empty Kethane fuel sats into orbit to see how much I can transport there.

The Goal is getting the Kethane in Kerbal orbit, only processing enough to get the ships back and to use aerobraking as much as possible.

I will keep you update as I make the attempt.

[TimePeriod]

You will fail.

The Mun by itself has millions of tons of kethane, it would take weeks of real-life-time to harvest it all.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Just to warn you, this is likely to be moved to the mission reports section...

[SkyRender]

That will take quite a while. I have successfully depleted very large Kethane deposits before, but it took several trips to do so. If you want it to be doable within a sane amount of time, you'll have to construct a truly Whackjobian solution. Why you want to bring raw Kethane to Kerbin orbit is beyond me, of course; that's its least efficient form. Kethane is meaningfully more useful if you convert it to fuel on the surface first and then bring it to orbit.

[Bnethor]

Heh, it's funny you should mention this because I had built a fairly big refueling station earlier and I needed to give it some meaning.

Kethane was the first mod I installed and I literally started fiddling around with it a day or two ago. I prefer building large ships and when I got a contract to test the KR-2L or some engine landed at Dres I figured I'd make a craft for that and Kethane operations at the same time. My designs often contain quite a bit of inefficiency in favor of flexibility so I apologize beforehand

http://imgur.com/a/BIFB9 - Meh, don't know how to show this album here otherwise so I'll just link it...

Edited November 18, 2014 by Bnethor

[OgreMagi]

you can move it if you wish/need, I found in a earlier version of the game I mined out a full patch of kethane on the Mun and it wasn't that hard, so I play around with it when I can and see how long it would take

[michaelhester07]

Since it's sandbox you can make a lander that can 1-shot a kethane field and still make it off the mun. You might burn some of it to get back to orbit but it's doable.

[Slam_Jones]

I've been able to build a fairly sizable and efficient KethLab on the Mun within about two days of installing Kethane.

As far as running out of Kethane, well, the first driller I dropped on Mun went haywire and won't let me retract the drill, and is simply spitting Kethane into space... still think it would take a few in-game years to drain all of that deposit. Since there's many deposits on every planet, the chance of completely running out of Kethane is all but nil.

[memorablynamed]

Green smoke-spewing particle effects notwithstanding, if you're out of tank space for more Kethane, the deposit will not be depleted. If your driller is full, then that deposit is likely to remain as is.

Also, yes, draining the entire Mun of Kethane is a Herculean undertaking with relatively little reward. I have a career save going where I have to repay all the funds that I use by selling refined LF/O from my Munar Kethane mining stations, and even with all that demand, I still have several full deposits. I wish you the best of luck, but be prepared for a long grind.

[WuphonsReach]

Also, yes, draining the entire Mun of Kethane is a Herculean undertaking with relatively little reward. I have a career save going where I have to repay all the funds that I use by selling refined LF/O from my Munar Kethane mining stations, and even with all that demand, I still have several full deposits. I wish you the best of luck, but be prepared for a long grind.

How are you selling refined LF/O? Another mod?