Space Atmospheric Flight Mod

[RedPandaz]

Hey is there a mod that adds some sort of atmosphere in space so you can fly around like an Airplane? [like in Star Wars?] I think that would be pretty cool ^^

[KerikBalm]

ummm... how would that even work?

I suppose you could just extend the atmosphere of planets to be ridiculously high... but you can ignore orbits at that point.

[DualDesertEagle]

Well, atmospheric flight in space would be just that: Atmospheric flight. And I don't know if it's even possible to edit the height of a stock planet's atmosphere, but I see 3 problems there already: 1- This is a video game and the height of the atmosphere might not be irreversibly tied to the behaviour of any craft at any given altitude. 2 - Even if that's the case u would have to make the atmospheres of all planets reach out so far that it's always dense enough for wings and control surfaces to work if u have any plans of flying all the way to other planets, much more so if u wanna use air breathing engines. And travelling to other bodies brings me to point #3 - time warp. Even just skimming through the last few atoms of the outer atmosphere of any body that has one forces physics warp. Even just flying to the Mun would take HOURS that way, let alone leaving Kerbin's SOI and going interplanetary!

 

If anything, there should be a mod that simulates atmospheric flight by firing thrusters according to the change of an aircraft's orientation and prograde vector, which, btw, has also been done in the stock game by Scott Manley, albeit all manually:

 

 

[FrostedShoe]

It's not just atmosphere you need to make it like star wars, it's no gravity too. You would also need to ignore heating effects and drag if you wanted any fun out of it.

[Atkara]

Haven't heard of such a mod. But:

It's not atmosphere what you're after, but an inertia dampening "system". You'd also need something that calculates your craft's velocity in reference to the nearest celestial body. That is, so that you'll come to a relative, instead of an absolute stop -unless you'd like to see how long it would take for the entire galaxy to leave you behind, if you opted for the latter

There's also the problem of how to get into orbit around a celestial body. I suppose you'd need a system that tampers with your spacecraft's mass, so that you'd enter into a synchronous orbit, at a much lower altitude than you'd normally need. This, ensures a smooth atmospheric interface, without all the fireworks, usually coming with it.

Since we've reached this point, we could also add a hyperdrive, and the more I look at it, the more I seem to be describing Elite: Dangerous, without the "dangerous" part (or at least, without most of it)

[Starman4308]

Elite: Dangerous and other sci-fi games seem like a better bet. KSP was designed from the ground up as a Newtonian simulation game, without the "space is made out of WD-40" that other games have.

While you could sort of hack it with Kopernicus configs to alter atmospheres, there are plenty of other games which were designed to do what you want.

[Nich]

Infinite fuel and an engine pointing straight down

[Wcmille]

I think this might work:

To experience atmospheric-like flight, set your craft to prograde and use RCS translation. This will change your prograde vector, which in turn, will change your direction. You should not turn, let your SAS do the turning.

This will not be fuel efficient.

[Rocketsciences101]

I"ll put it this way... You better have LOTS of fuel because your orbit would always degrade so your left with a VERY horrible reentry and suborbital (I think it cant be called reentry anymore) flights and Orbiting Gilly? Forget it you would escape or crash because you can orbit at 15!? m/s so mark Gilly of the list.