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Moon-mining involves using your POS to extract Raw Materials from a moon. The Moon Harvesting Array structure will mine the moon your POS is anchored at. This is on provision that the moon has materials. To find if you have a suitable moon, you have to do some Moon Surveying.

The materials you harvest can be sold to other players or developed into more complex materials - eventually possibly allowing the construction of a T2 component.

• For more information about probing moons for resources, see Moon Scanning Guide.
• For more information about moons resources, see Moon Resources.

The first requirement is a moon with a harvestable material. Not all moons contain Moon Materials. To find a suitable moon, you'll need to probe the moons you are interested in. You cannot moon mine with your ship or mining barge, moon mining can only be achieved by using a Moon Harvesting Array structure at your POS.

• Moon Harvesting Array - Needed to extract materials from a moon.
• Silo - Needed to store Moon materials

• You may need a Coupling Array.
• You may need a Reactor if you plan to process the materials.

The moon must reside in a system that exists in .4 space and below - you cannot mine moons in high security space. Moons located in wormholes do not contain harvestable materials.

Reaction blueprints are much like a blueprint used for manufacturing ships or modules. When installed into a Reactor Array structure, it tells the reactor what type of material to create based on the materials being fed into it. In most cases your reactor will be connected directly to your moon harvesters, so you will need to get a Reaction Blueprint that matches the materials produced by your moon. Without a Reaction blueprint, your Reactor Array will not work. You must ensure you use the right Reaction Blueprint or your reactor will not be able to process your moon materials into something better.

There are several stages to moon material processing.

Raw Materials → Processed Materials → Advanced Materials

To get from one material state to the next you need to put the materials into a Reactor Array and insert the right Reaction Blueprint to create the next level of a material. There are many types of materials and many types of Reactions but the 3 groups remain the same, think of the above 3 like this:

Wheat → Flour → Bread

You can sell the Wheat, but it can also be turned into Flour. You can sell the Flour but it can also be turned into Bread - which is obviously the most wanted.

Reaction blueprints are used to combine moon minerals into Processed Materials, or Processed Materials into Advanced Material, which may then be used to make Tech 2 components used as materials for T2 equipment. Reactions must be done at a POS, with a Reactor Array structure. In most cases your reactor will use materials provided by your Moon Harvesting Arrays, so you will need to get a Reaction Blueprint that matches the materials produced by your available moons. Without a Reaction blueprint, your Reactor Arrays will not work. You must ensure you use the right Reaction Blueprint or your reactor will not be able to process your Moon Materials into other products.

There are two kinds of Reaction Blueprints:

Simple Reaction blueprints are used as the first stage of processing products from a moon. They are used to turn Raw Materials into Processed Materials. (Wheat → Flour)

Raw materials → [Simple reaction blueprint] → Processed Materials

Complex Reaction blueprints are used as the second stage of processing products from a moon. They are used to turn Processed Materials into Advanced Materials.

Processed Materials → [Complex reaction blueprint] → Advanced Materials

• Right-click on your Reactor Array and click 'Access Resources'
• Drag and Drop the Reaction blueprint in that corresponds with the materials produced by your moon

You will then need to configure the process via your Control Tower before onlining the structure..

Below you will find out about the process of making a construction component (Tech 2 part) from moon mining.

Your Moon Harvesting Array mines the moon and stores the contents in your Silo. All of this must be configured via your Control Tower prior to onlining your Moon Harvesting Arrays.

Once you have surveyed a good moon, you can begin mining it with your Moon Harvester Arrays. Moons all vary in material content and abundance of content but never run out of the material they provide.

Configure Your Harvesters:

• Open your Control Tower's management panel
• Click to select the 'Production' tab
• Click 'Change type' for a Moon Harvester
• Select one of the available materials from the moon
• Click 'Apply' on the management window

The next step is configure the Silo to store the material which is being harvested from the Moon. To do this, click the 'change type' button for the destination silo, and select the Moon Material to be stored. Only one kind of material can be configured at a silo at a time. Pay close attention; the drop down list for the Moon Harvesting Array and Silo differ slightly.

Next, configure how the materials flow. Each item that can store a product will have a square outline on the left side of its entry indicating the input, while right side indicates output. Drag the output of the Harvester Array (which should now be a Moon Material icon) into the Input (left side slot) of your Silo. There will now be an associated colour and when you hover on the input side, the output of the connected harvesting array will high-light to visually indicate that it provides output.

Click Apply and note the time - this should be the cycle time on your control tower. After you click Apply, online your silo, and then harvester(s).

The Moon Harvesting Array will begin warming up one cycle then will start harvesting, with products appearing in the connected silo approximately two hours following the moment apply was pressed.

Ok, we know that once harvested, moons will produce Raw materials, but what exactly are Raw Materials? Well, there are two types of Raw Material, these are Gases and Metals. Gases are common, Metals are rarer, but both are essential if you plan to process your materials.

Moon materials have different rarity classes, starting with R4 being the most common and R64 being the most rare.

A single Moon Harvesting Array can mine 100 units of any single Moon Material your moon has per cycle. If your moon produces Atmospheric Gases and Tungsten, you can mine 100 of either material per cycle, but you may not harvest both at the same time unless you have two Moon Harvesting Arrays and a destination (Silo or Reactor) for each.

The Abundance of a particular material is how many cycles of a material you can potentially harvest. If a Moon offers a Material with an abundance of two, you may use multiple moon harvesting arrays to extract a total of 200 units of that material every cycle.

Your Moon Harvesting Arrays will mine then deposit your raw materials into the silo you specified during configuration. This will continue until you stop the process or until your Silo is full. You will need to offline the Silo before you can empty it, this is where a Coupling Array comes in handy.

If a silo is offline for any reason during a time when it would normally cycle, than the output that would have been generated is discarded and cannot be recovered. To avoid missing a moon cycle you can anchor a Coupling array. In the production configuration you would simply pipe the output from your Harvester into the input of the Coupling Array, then pipe the output of the Coupling into the input of your Silo. The Coupling Array will temporarily hold any materials generated while the silo is offline for emptying.

You now have the option to either sell your Moon Materials or process them into Processed Materials.

So you've decided to turn your newly acquired Moon Materials into a more useful material. You do this by combining them together in a Reactor Array to create the Processed Material.

Prior to this step, the only items you need are Silos and Harvesters. Once you decide to react them into Processed materials, you'll need to get simple or complex reactor and appropriate blueprints.

Begin by anchoring the Reactor Array and an output silo, and then opening the Control Tower Management Panel, and select the Production tab. Drag a suitable Reaction Blueprint, and configure the input side so that the two necessary input products are available. You will also need to configure the output silo to store the product being produced by the Reactor Array. If an output silo is not configured, your output product will be destroyed and cannot be recovered.

Finally, online the Silo and then the reactor. After a warmup period, the output silo will begin to fill with the Processed Material.

As some moons are rarer than others, it may be necessary to buy Moon Materials to complete some reactions.

Once you have a Processed Material you can either sell it or process it into a Advanced Materials.

The process of generating a Advanced material from Processed Materials is similar to the process of generating Processed Materials from Moon Materials. Advanced Materials are used directly for creating T2 construction components.

The main differences are that you will be using a Complex Reactor Array, a Complex Reaction Reaction Blueprint, and you will need to supply the Processed Materials, either from the output of a previous reaction, or from the market. As with Simple Reaction blueprints, not all Complex Reaction combinations will generate useable products, so be sure to check with the complex reaction blueprints to see what you can produce.

In order to facilitate this, you can configure a simple reactor to connect to a complex reactor, or you can use a Silo to store Processed materials transported from another location.

After the reaction of Processed Materials, the designated output Silo will be Advanced Material

You now have some Advanced Materials. Advanced Materials are required to build Tech 2 components.

You will now need to buy a Tech 2 Component Blueprint from market. (E.g. Magpulse Thruster blueprint).

Begin by transporting the product in the Complex Reactor output silo to a suitable station or component assembly array and build the T2 component from a blueprint. You can do this from a personal hangar or a corp hangar, just as with all other modules or equipment you routinely build. In most cases, a single Advanced Material will be 1/3 of the required material types required to build the component.

Once you get to this level, the spread of required Moon Materials is such that it's practically necessary to purchase or trade to fill in the missing Advanced materials used for a T2 Component.

Note that unless you're also producing finished T2 products, there's generally no additional profit to be made from selling T2 components compared to selling Advanced Materials. Most people who do T2 production will just produce the components themselves, as they already have all the necessary production skills.

The selection of Moon Materials available at any given moon, coupled with The CPU Requirements of the necessary POS modules make it impossible to create a T2 part from start to finish with a single POS. To create a single advanced material requires multiple POS's to obtain each material and process them. Many moons will produce two materials necessary for a Simple Reaction to complete successfully, but to complete a complex reaction generally requires two or more control towers. this requires one to carefully consider upkeep (shifting Moon and Processed materials), exporting advanced materials for sale, Importing fuel, and other critical items.

In short, even under ideal circumstances, operating an entire chain will require time and planning. A few working hands help, too.

Teamwork helps small corporations to handle mundane logistics tasks. A moon can potentially produce a freighter full of materials to move, which can make exporting these materials time consuming, risky, or cost-inefficient. Partnering with more or larger corporations can eliminate many logistics issues.

One possible agreement might include working with dedicated industrial partner corporations. By collaborating on specific markets for the sale of materials or item, it's possible to split the quantity or profits.

Alternatively, the scale of a moon mining operation does not need to include Tech 2 components. Measure what stage in the process that your corp can operate comfortably at and do your best at it. If it's just you and a couple of friends in your corp, then you can run a Small Control Tower and harvest Moon Materials to sell onto to others. If you are a medium sized corp and have found a good moon, you could run Simple Reactions and produce Processed materials to Sell. If you are a large corporation and have several POS's, you could go all the way to shiny and very much sought after Tech 2 Components.

You will almost 100% need a spreadsheet of one form or another if you want to get into Moon Mining.

Moon Mining Spreadsheet by Notmo:

• Moon Mining Spreadsheet

It is HIGHLY advised to run through the numbers yourself to make sure you understand everything prior to pouring all your money into a Moon Mining investment.

• First Moon Mine Guide - Written by Notmo