Electric rockets

[CosmicJoker42]

I have been attempting to modify the Ion Engine to run only on electricity, but at a somewhat higher rate than it currently does. Attempts to modify the config file towards this end have failed miserably. If you know how to do this, please post necessary edits.

[EndlessWaves]

you can't, short of a custom engine plugin or a modified electricity resource. ModuleEngines fuel consumption is specified in mass flow rate (ISP) and it doesn't support running solely on purely massless resources.

Well, you may be able to use the old LiquidEngine class but that was pre-0.16 so it may not support action groups and so on.

[Cryocasm]

Its also possible to simply make the engine consume 1 xenon per hour at full throttle, while making the other edits (more power for more thrust).

[Flixxbeatz]

Just what I'm needing. A modified ion engine to entirely run on electricity (so it's not an Ion engine anymore) and has 100x more thrust than the original. Or an entirely new engine that only runs on electricity that is more powerful than the ion engine.

Solar Impulse, here I come...

[Eric S]

If you're looking for electric powered atmospheric flight rather than space flight, check out the Firespitter plane/helicopter parts, they have electric variants.

If you're interested in how those parts get around this issue, they actually do it in a more realistic way than as a reactionless drive. The engines have air intake values, and it uses that air as the reaction mass, which is basically what a propeller is doing in real life, though you wouldn't say it has an air intake.