Is it possible to keep rotors spinning when returning to a savegame?

[xendelaar]

I recently did a mission near the "surface" of Jool with a couple of floating helicopters. It worked perfectly, but I had to do everything in one go, because after reloading a savegame, the rotors of the floating vessels would stop rotating and plumut to the ground ...uh..I mean abyss. 

Is there a way to keep the rotors spinning, maintaining their angle of attack and lift? 

Edited April 16, 2020 by xendelaar

[AHHans]

7 hours ago, xendelaar said:

Is there a way to keep the rotors spinning, maintaining their angle of attack and lift? 

AFAIK you cannot keep the rotors spinning. In my experience it is also problematic to save while they are spinning, because the blades tend to move relative to the rotor engines. But the blade pitch should not be changed when saving & reloading. So what I did with my winged(!) propeller planes on Eve was to hit the brakes for a short time when saving. I also have switching on (on, not toggling) the rotor torque on an action group, so that I could hammer that (and <B> for releasing the brakes) when reloading. I don't know if that would also work for a helicopter on Jool.

[xendelaar]

thanks for the comment @AHHans. This would work on Jool as well.

In this particular case I was building a floating "village" (2 cottages and a ascend vehicle to get back in orbit). reloading would mean I would have to get all 3 rotor up and running again and fine tune every velocity so that the cottages and ascend vehicle would be aligned next to each other.. every times. that is not what I had in mind haha.

It's a shame KSP doesn't work like that but there are probably many reasons why this feature wasn't included in the game.