Orient to Heading.

[Greel]

One of my biggest gripes with KSP is how when in orbit your craft does not have the ability to maintain its heading and instead stays pointing in the same direction. This causes your heading to slowly move as you orbit. If you set your ship pointing directly at a planet, after traveling half way around your orbit you will now be facing away from said planet.

I would love to see a new option added to all command pods that keeps a ship oriented to its heading. This would use reaction wheels/RCS to keep a ship pointing at the same location in space throughout its orbit, and would consume a constant electric charge (for reaction wheels, mono propellant for RCS) to do so. When enabled the heading would be derived from the SAS and whatever its last locked on position was.

As an example of what this would do: If you were to launch a satellite into orbit and point it directly at Kerbin (a heading of 0). No matter where you are in your orbit you would always be poiting directly at Kerbin. If you point this satellite at a distant star, no matter where in your orbit you are you would still be facing that star.

This could make docking substantially easier since you can make it so both vessels never rotate. Line them up, orient to heading and wait for contact.

This would also open up new possibilities for RP as well as for new parts. being able to make a Kerbal Space Telescope and actually have it maintain a constant heading, or the above mentioned satellite that can always look towards a planet. New parts could be added as well, parts that must always face away from the sun, or always point towards the sun, or towards a certain target.

[r4pt0r]

the only issue with this is that if you are out of range of a craft, the game calculates it as though its on rails, with no heed to rotation. turn off sas, and get a ship spining. switch ships and then switch back. the spinning will have stopped. unless you are watching a craft directly, it wont remember rotation at all.

[Superfluous J]

Seems reasonable, though you'd have to figure out a way to get it to work during time warp.

[MaYBiS]

it's my understanding that if i have a heavy thing in space orbit the heavy side will always face away from the center mass that its orbiting.

[Superfluous J]

it's my understanding that if i have a heavy thing in space orbit the heavy side will always face away from the center mass that its orbiting.

In the game or in real life? I've not heard this for either.

I suppose that if your object (that was doing the orbiting) was long enough, tidal forces would get it aligned to point downward. That's what happens to the Moon. But like how toilets don't really flush the opposite way in the Southern Hemisphere even though hurricanes do, space stations won't do that in reality.

[Sirrobert]

That's not possible while a craft is on rails, as the physics aren't simulated than. And I'm pritty sure your craft is on rails most of the time