Is there a cheap way to start mining?

[Westbend]

I am taking my first steps into space and I noticed that to build my first small mining facility on the moon would cost 56.9 Boost to get the facility built via Earth (since I dont have materials available in space yet). This is a massive cost.

Am I missing something, or is this as intended to reflect the difficulty of the very first step into space mining?

[Galroche]

the first is hard, you can find a few early tech that reduce cost of boosting in space(space tug i think ?), but it will still cost you a lot of boost .
but that's why Early kazakstan and france are nice, they have high boost production

[Devoras]

I did it the hard way, it took years to get enough boost to build anything at all, even with some decent boost countries. Once you have all the resources coming in from space though, those stations/ outposts that took 600 days to build and obscene amounts of boost, will take absolutely tiny amounts of resources and only 40 days to build, you can basically build any stations you want wherever you want at that point. It takes a long time to get started, but once you get the foundations going you snowball quickly.

A big part of the problem is you have to use your boost to maintain space facilities unless you have the resources needed being mined in space, so it's a double blow where it takes crazy amounts of boost to build anything, and if you build anything your boost income slows down significantly from upkeep, but you have to build things in order to progress.

[The_Draf]

Yes, building anything in space before you have mines setup is a noob trap. Another is over expanding on the moon. Usually there is only one or two spots worth mining, the rest are usually to high maintenance to be worth it, better save up for mars.

[Warhunter]

it probably is intended. alot of boost consumption is bringing metal from earth into space. when you get your first mine all later modules will take significantly less boost as you can use the resources you mined in space instead of having to boost it from earth.

the moon is a good starting spot just to harvest metal (water/volatiles as good secondary resource) to save you alot of boost as metal is the most used resource for construction. water and volatiles are used for maintenance which can add up so you don't want too much stuff on the moon until you reach mars where the real good mining spots are

once you have positive for all the resources you'll be able to build modules using only space resources and not use any boost (also much faster since you dont have to wait for boosted material from earth to arrive)