Conveyor Integrated Mining Ship

The ship consists of two part, the main craft which features a scoop in the front for collecting ore, the conveyor system for dumping the ore and a large cargo container which acts like a buffer between the scoop and the connector(dumper).
The second part is a small ship which acts like the drillhead, it is basically a grid of 50 mining drills, connected via the conveyor system to connectors which in turn dumps any ore the drills pick up.The drillhead also features thrusters and gyro so that it can be flown like any small ship, for easy attachment to the main craft.
5 gravity generators make sure that all ore is caught by the scoop, 4 of them pushing ore towards the center of the craft and the last one pulling the ore towards the craft.
Workshop Link
Actually mining @ 2 min 20 sec (2:20)
Dropping off ore @ 5 min 15 sec (5:15)

 

I decided to make a more survival friendly version, well early survival at least.
After some testing, I've figured that a few more connectors should be added to speed up transfer of ore, luckily the place where the collector is positioned easily allows for the addition of 6 or more connectors..

WorkShop Link


*edit* Updated the workshop link, the craft now has 4 connectors, since dumping ore with just one is way too slow on a small craft

 

Have you tried your bigger ship version with rotating cross consisting of 50 drills? It would work slower but would have bigger range. Or use less rotating drills so you don't have to click 50 times to enable them.

 

You don't have to click 50 times to enable them, you just have to turn the power on/off in the small ship, since they have already been enabled once.
I dislike rotating drills for anything but automatic mining.
This is a mining ship, it's meant to be operated manually, and rotating drills would be horrible for that, since applying too much pressure will stop the rotation, and working at low pressure makes for slow mining.
As the ship is right now, it will takes less than a minute to start up and will mine about 745 m3 of rock per minute (meaning it'll advance 3 meters into a roid each minute)

 

I know that I can just press Y, thats why I just build that ship in survival. Mine has 80drills (which is still 160 clicks to run for the first time and to this I was reffering to). I really like the simplicity of this but I find there is only problem that it is easily damaged because of it's mass. Now I just need to add some pushing mechanism for the ship or platform but don't have an idea how to make it now

 

Thanks, i was going for simplicity and yeah crushing the drills is an issue, that's why it only has 3 small thrusters for forward thrust, so i can keep em on while mining without crushing the drills.
As for a pushing mechanism, you can do it the hard way and make an external frame with rotors pushing it down with arms.
Or you can do it the easy way and add a small gravity engine, which can be done several ways depending on the shape and size of your ship.
In the case of my ship, i would probably: Remove 2 of the 3 rear thrusters, move the middle one further back by 1-2 blocks, add a gravity generator between this thruster and the ship, and replace the 2 removed thrusters with 2 lines of mass blocks and finally shrink the gravity field so it only encompasses the mass blocks

 

What if you just disable forward-facing thrusters instead of adding gravity drive?

 

What would that accomplish? Drills don't pull you forward, all you would achieve is removing your ability to move in reverse