Ram Air Turbine (RATs)

[natsirt721]

1 minute ago, ZooNamedGames said:

...ultralight's reaction wheels

And you're worried about overkill?

edit: But point taken, I would agree with the overkill assessment

Edited August 11, 2017 by natsirt721

[septemberWaves]

2 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

For me it isn't realistic

The space shuttle was powered by fuel cells. And the plane parts in KSP are designed with spaceplanes in mind. So which is really unrealistic, having fuel cells on a spaceplane like the space shuttle had, or having a little windmill on a stick that projects out of the fuselage?

[ZooNamedGames]

3 minutes ago, eloquentJane said:

The space shuttle was powered by fuel cells. And the plane parts in KSP are designed with spaceplanes in mind. So which is really unrealistic, having fuel cells on a spaceplane like the space shuttle had, or having a little windmill on a stick that projects out of the fuselage?

Never said my planes were going to space. My uses are the same as why Boeing and Airbus have these 'windmills' deploy in the event of power failure on their aircraft or in my case, to generate power when the engines are not in use.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

While I like the idea, and might use it every now and then, I can see why it hasn't been a thing (yet). 

As control surfaces don't require electricity (they really should require electricity or something), control of your aircraft does not require electricity (unless you're a drone, in which case you should probably have good battery and such anyways).

Sure, maybe you'll lose your reaction wheels, but I've found that they usually don't make much of a difference even on small planes anyways, except in the edge cases that you spam them or have knife edge stability and extremely wimpy control surfaces.

Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to get a ram turbine (and power-drawing control surfaces), I'm just pointing out why squad probably hasn't added them.

Now that I think about it, such a device would need to be carefully balanced to make sure it couldn't just create electricity from nowhere (Eg: reaction wheels spin a giant wheel with ram turbines at the edges, which power the reaction wheels, and so on. Then again we do get unlimited power from rtgs, so...)