I know I'm going to get looked at like an infidel for it, but I actually use a gamepad(A Logitech F510, a proper PC gamepad, none of that xbox nonsense). Even beat pretty much everything I played on Insane with it. It gives you the fast turning of a joystick and good-enough precision to actually hit things at longer distances. I have a joystick, but I can' fly anywhere near as well with it.
Though with all the fancy new features like gliding and lateral thrusters I needed more bindings than my F510 had so I just bound them to my racing pedals with Xpadder. And of course, all the stuff you don't need at your fingertips is still on the keyboard. Can't have all 100 targeting and faffing about with the energy levels stuff on the gamepad.
I keep the afterburner bound to the clutch pedal just so I can chuckle when I fly at missiles and dodge them at the last second without using countermeasures. A "clutch" dodge indeed.