Steer on reaction wheels

Fit an in-line reaction wheel so a heavy ship turns on electricity instead of thruster propellant, and set how hard it bites.

You need this when a long or heavy ship turns too slowly on its pod alone, or when every second of thruster firing is propellant you would rather keep for docking.

• You own the Reaction Wheels node (the RW-100), or Wide Storage for the wide RW-500. See the tech tree.
• The ship has a pod with a pilot, or a Sat Controller in contact. A wheel does not fly a ship on its own.
• The ship carries charge: a wheel turning flat out draws 0.35 u/s (RW-100) or 1.6 u/s (RW-500).

Steps

1. Put the wheel in the stack. In the hangar, open the Utility tab of the palette and drop the wheel between two parts of its own width, like a tank or a battery. Fuel and thruster propellant pass through it.
2. Give it charge to spend. Add a battery bank, and solar panels to refill it between turns. A B-90 Battery covers about four minutes of an RW-100 turning flat out; a B-1600 Battery Bank about sixteen of an RW-500. See Deploy a solar panel.
3. Fly and turn as usual. The two curved-arrow buttons turn the ship, and the wheel adds its torque to whatever else answers them. It draws charge only while the ship is turning.
4. Turn it down if it is too much. Tap the wheel. Its sheet opens, named for the part, with one slider: Wheel strength, from 0 to 100 %. Lower it and the wheel turns the ship more gently and draws less. The same slider is on the part's properties sheet in the hangar, and the ship keeps whatever you set.

What you should see

The ship swings round far faster than it did on the pod alone, and in the readout at the top left the ELECTRICITY row's bracketed rate dips each time you hold a turn button. Let go and the drain stops.