ship flipping > 10 km

[Lohan2008]

The new ship seem extremely top heavy, even with small reaction wheels, I still get ship pitching 180 around 10 km.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Lohan2008

[Blu_C]

EDIT:

Ok, from what I can see your main problem is those boosters. They are too high up on the rocket. Simply moving them farther down will give you a HUGE boost in stability. Your problem is likely that as they burn out their fuel the center of thust is moved ahead of your center of mass, which makes for stability problems on a rocket without control surfaces while in atmosphere (in vacuum it tends not to pose a problem).

If you don't wish to move your huge boosters you can also try adding some fins to the main center stack.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Blu_C
Picture provided

[NoMrBond]

There are a couple of new videos focused on adapting to the new aerodynamics system in 1.0 as well which may help

Kerbal Space Program 1.0 - Launching Rockets To Orbit

KSP 101: Very Basics and Orbit - Kerbal Space Program Tutorial

[DrinkV0dka]

From what i understand making the ship top heavy doesn't t help. To help you can press the modifier key (alt) and f12 and bring up the cheat menu. Then go to the aero tab and turn on an option that says something like, show aero forces. With that you can see the forces acting on the rocket, its represented by arrows. if the arrow show too much force one way then the air is pushing the nose down because of the weight. I hope i explained this well but Scott Manley made a video on this as well.

[NathanKell]

Nope, top-heavy is good. When's the last time you saw a bottom-heavy dart or arrow?

[THX1138]

Do you have fins unlocked? You should add fins to the bottom so there is more drag there, keeping the bottom towards the ground.

[Cebi]

Too much drag-y high above CoM and less drag low. It is like throwing paper plane backwards. Good rockets/planes with new aero are now looking much more like real rockets/planes. Look at some pictures and try something similar.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Cebi

[SRV Ron]

The new aerodynamics will cause ships to flip if you make your orbital turn too aggressively as we have all done in the past. Fins will help but watching your speed and doing the orbital turn right away but very gradually will result in a more efficient flight.

[1greywind]

Press Alt-F12 while in game, then go to "Physics" > "Aero" tab and toggle "show aerodynamic forces on screen" (or something like that). You will see arrows of different colors - red is drag, yellow is control surfaces, blue is lift. Then you turn your rocket, you'll see how many red arrows appear - those are the forces that flip you craft.

[Rokmonkey]

One big thing I notice is that you are at 50Km and still pointing straight up. Is that your normal turn or is this captured part way through a flip?

As a summary from what was said above:

-Your Liquid Fueled Boosters are enormous and far to high up. In this picture is your payload something other than the capsule?

-Unless you absolutely need it for large payloads, go for serial staging, meaning don't strap boosters on the sides and instead put them on top of each other, think Saturn V.

-You want all of your mass at the top of the rocket, so that all of the drag will be at the bottom of your rocket. If you can't do that, then you will want to place fins at the base of your rocket, this will pull the center of pressure down behind your center of mass.

[micr0wave]

i'm not really sure about this, but the struts have a drag value shown in VAB and the girders and landing legs too, in case that all adds up there's a lot of drag at the top.

[Wanderfound]

Nope, top-heavy is good. When's the last time you saw a bottom-heavy dart or arrow?

OTOH, top-draggy is bad, for much the same reason.

[Korizan]

Don't forget to upgrade your the launch site.

Started and new game and had no problems with the solid boosters on the dirt launch platform.

Then I built a basic small rocket with liquid engines and the FL-T400 tanks.

I could not get this thing to become stable, ran about 6 test flights.

Added fins and ran 6 more flights same result.

The weird bit is the rockets launch normal and at first glance appear to be running fine but then they just become uncontrollable.

So I up graded the platform.

And there was a world of difference.

It went from near impossible to get the rocket on the track you want to pretty much no problem.

Removed the fins and again no problem.

You will notice none of the video's above are using the dirt platform.

So upgrade them platforms.

[Lohan2008]

I stopped flipping by attaching winglets.