Wow, this sounds great. Just make sure to make it look kerbal, with a paint-job worthy of the total awesomeness of it. You might want some extra switches, just normal flicky-toggley ones, for things like brakes and landing gear. How are you gonna rotate view? Maybe embed a laptop trackpad into it and somehow code it to act as a right-click-drag when touched. And leave a space for a perspex-covered 'ABORT!' button, i\'ve heard that it is a planned feature - plan for the extra keys by leaving spaces for future expansion, and you\'ll have a joypad worthy of an insane amount of... joy. Good luck on the project. I wish I could refer you to a guru of design, but alas, I know none. I\'m strictly an ideas-man.