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Wait a mo... since things fall in a straight line...


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How does a zero-width parabola differ from a straight line? Serious question.

Technicalities man. :P Technically, a "line" never ends in both directions, a ray would be the most similar thing to a zero-width parabolic arc, except for a few things. No matter how "straight" you get you're "line", gravity and space-time will still make it impossible for it to actually be straight. Even if you have to go 3000 digits to the right of the decimal to measure the difference, It is technically not straight. Plus, the parabolic arc shows where you have been, relative to your current vellocity and position. The only way you would have a ray is if you just poofed into a fixed position with zero velocity. Gravity would then pull you down. Except that that is impossible, and even if that could happen, it would still be considered a parabolic arc. Gotta love math. :P That is just a few of many reasons why there are no "lines" in space. (I think. Anyone can correct me, since this is all the products of my brain, I did no reasearch. :P )

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I think a good first step for this would be to add a means for the SAS to hold a navball-dependent orientation. Currently, it locks orientation relative to the entire Kerbol system which, long-term, is almost completely useless. It prevents SAS from being any use on a plane, prevents sun-locking a probe or vessel, and also prevents you from facing relative to your orbiting body.

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I think a good first step for this would be to add a means for the SAS to hold a navball-dependent orientation. Currently, it locks orientation relative to the entire Kerbol system which, long-term, is almost completely useless. It prevents SAS from being any use on a plane, prevents sun-locking a probe or vessel, and also prevents you from facing relative to your orbiting body.

This would also allow you to actually perform a normal/antinormal burn, that'd be pretty useful. MJ can do that already though.

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I think a good first step for this would be to add a means for the SAS to hold a navball-dependent orientation. Currently, it locks orientation relative to the entire Kerbol system which, long-term, is almost completely useless. It prevents SAS from being any use on a plane, prevents sun-locking a probe or vessel, and also prevents you from facing relative to your orbiting body.

The big problem is in noncircular orbits, rotating the ship to keep the navball in the same orientation would require constant power. Granted, with how our SASes are that power is minimal but it's still there and I can't imagine it working well on rails.

But you are right, there's nothing "special" about <0,0,0> rotation, other than being easier to program than anything else :)

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The big problem is in noncircular orbits, rotating the ship to keep the navball in the same orientation would require constant power. Granted, with how our SASes are that power is minimal but it's still there and I can't imagine it working well on rails.

Don't care if it works on rails, really, not right now. But yeah, it takes a slight draw of power which is a) more realistic than having a completely dumb pod need no power whatsoever and B) completely negligible as soon as you mount the smallest solar panel.

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The big problem is in noncircular orbits, rotating the ship to keep the navball in the same orientation would require constant power. Granted, with how our SASes are that power is minimal but it's still there and I can't imagine it working well on rails.

But you are right, there's nothing "special" about <0,0,0> rotation, other than being easier to program than anything else :)

All you would have to do is just save your current orientation relative to the body you are orbiting when you enter time warp and reset your craft to that when you exit time warp. There is already a mod somewhere which keeps you rotating through time warp. Not stop your rotation like it does now, I'm sure that could be modified somehow to suit this purpose.

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