Trouble cooling robo-miners in space

[JohnFrancis]

15 hours ago, Cryocrat said:

Anyone got any advice?

No gas required and it's maintenance free, have put it on the relevant bit in the video below.

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[Gus Smedstad]

22 hours ago, Cryocrat said:

Also Neotuck, that is a very impressive build, but considering I'm on survival mode I'm not sure I could generate enough cold to cool off fresh regolith before it starts overheating and breaking the miners.

It's not actually possible to cool down the regolith in time. When I went through this stage I raised the same question, and tried Neotuck's build. It's not viable with steel miners, period. The regolith's too hot, and inevitably a meteor will land just before the doors start opening, and there's simply not enough time to cool the regolith enough. His build only works if you have thermium miners.

Fortunately, you can convert all your tungsten to thermium as soon as you get 5kg of niobium from a space mission. 5kg niobium + 95kg tungsten = 100 kg thermium, and then 100 kg thermium -> 100 kg niobium in a metal refinery.

Until then, though, you're using steel miners, and you need active cooling like John Francis laid out. My system was a bit different from his, but the principle was the same. Overhead protection so the miner doesn't get buried, ever. Overlapping areas of effect so miners can clear the roof over an adjacent miner. A dollop of liquid protected by drywall, so the miner can transfer heat to a pipe carrying coolant.

I went with horizontal rather than vertical miners, which meant the miners had a much wider area of effect. You can put them down in pairs, so each covers its partner's roof. Pairs do not need to overlap with other pairs, so you need fewer miners.

[Dyrewulfe]

I cooked up this setup for my first go at space and solar. It's nothing terribly fancy, but it works and requires no space age materials.

Steel miners with the afore-mentioned roof overlapping. Aquatuned pwater loop(I'm dumping the heat into a steam tank for rocket fueling atm), diamond tiles and naphtha. Naphtha is really easy to place into this setup, you just build a plastic ladder to the left of the miner, and let the regolith do the rest.