I've been playing around with the Kethane resource mod, and I believe I've met the requirements to be able to extract Kethane from Mun.
I've deployed satellites around Mun, in a rather nice fashion, if I do say so myself:
After I had scanned the area, I landed my miner in a dense concentration of Kethane deposits:
So far, so good. The landing was a bit rocky, but it survived intact. I deployed my drills, but they're not gathering Kethane:
According to the Kethane Fuel Routing thread, the fuel tanks work just like Monopropellant; they don't need fuel lines. As long as a drill is attached to the same entity as Kethane fuel tanks, they'll be filled. So what am I missing here? Why can't I gather Kethane?
Best Answer
I retracted my landing gear, and used RCS to balance on my engine. That let the drills dig deep enough into the surface to start extracting Kethane. So there's a maximum height the drills can be from the surface in order to do their job.
After some creative "bouncing" without landing struts, I managed to land on the engine hard enough to make it fall off. This allowed the lander to rest on the drills themselves. Surprisingly, this did NOT allow me to extract Kethane. I guess the drills have a minimum height, too.
Testing the drills on the launchpad shows that they don't draw power unless they start extracting Kethane. That allows you to ensure your drills will do their jobs properly.