Whats wrong with my shuttle? :/

[Tortoise]

When I launch it, it automatically goes forward, and crashes into the ground.

This is my first shuttle.

Craft

[Francesco]

could be a problem with staging? I can't tell from here, are those sepratrons supposed to fire at different times? like, some together with the big SRBs, and some after?

[Johnno]

I had a very quick look, yeah first stage has sepratrons firing along with two of the SRBs on the same side which has pushed your center of thrust off center. I'll adjust the staging and see if there are further issues. Will edit shortly.

Edit 1: Well I removed the sepratrons, but I think I found the underlying reason, your SRBs aren't angled out evenly on the top/bottom. Your top ones are angled closer together, putting the outer SRBs further out and creating a pivot point in thrust.

Edit 2: Yep, if you redo your SRBs entirely it'll fly. I'd advice you to use 4x symmetry and snap to angle so you get them placed properly. Do that on the decouplers first, slap on SRBs, decouplers on those and then the outer SRBs, using symmetry for all of them.

I gave it a quick shakedown flight and have a few comments.

- You won't need RCS tanks (or thrusters for that matter) on the SRBs, you'll have to drop them long before using RCS.

- I'd advice you to put the main body parachutes on the cockpit/pod (and potentially a decoupler as well).

- The shuttle's own engines aren't strong enough to bring it to orbit, according to Kerbal Engineer they only have 0.68 TWR, meaning you'll lose against gravity and deaccelerate (and then start losing altitude no matter 100% thrust).

- Initial SRB stage only has 1.07 TWR, meaning you barely gain any altitude before they burn out.

So a few pieces of advice to improve the design beyond redoing the boosters:

- More/stronger boosters (I slapped on 8 more on the first stage to get the thrust up)

- Stronger main shuttle engine (I added a skipper and got it into orbit with the added SRBs)

- I couldn't find any powersource on your ship, if you add anything that drains power I'd advice you to bring solar panels or a RTG, I prefer a RTG personally so I don't have to remember to deploy panels.

- I also put a few struts between the bottom tank and the red tank, it was a bit wobbly.

Hope all that helps.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Johnno

[Tortoise]

I had a very quick look, yeah first stage has sepratrons firing along with two of the SRBs on the same side which has pushed your center of thrust off center. I'll adjust the staging and see if there are further issues. Will edit shortly.

Edit 1: Well I removed the sepratrons, but I think I found the underlying reason, your SRBs aren't angled out evenly on the top/bottom. Your top ones are angled closer together, putting the outer SRBs further out and creating a pivot point in thrust.

Edit 2: Yep, if you redo your SRBs entirely it'll fly. I'd advice you to use 4x symmetry and snap to angle so you get them placed properly. Do that on the decouplers first, slap on SRBs, decouplers on those and then the outer SRBs, using symmetry for all of them.

I gave it a quick shakedown flight and have a few comments.

- You won't need RCS tanks (or thrusters for that matter) on the SRBs, you'll have to drop them long before using RCS.

- I'd advice you to put the main body parachutes on the cockpit/pod (and potentially a decoupler as well).

- The shuttle's own engines aren't strong enough to bring it to orbit, according to Kerbal Engineer they only have 0.68 TWR, meaning you'll lose against gravity and deaccelerate (and then start losing altitude no matter 100% thrust).

- Initial SRB stage only has 1.07 TWR, meaning you barely gain any altitude before they burn out.

So a few pieces of advice to improve the design beyond redoing the boosters:

- More/stronger boosters (I slapped on 8 more on the first stage to get the thrust up)

- Stronger main shuttle engine (I added a skipper and got it into orbit with the added SRBs)

- I couldn't find any powersource on your ship, if you add anything that drains power I'd advice you to bring solar panels or a RTG, I prefer a RTG personally so I don't have to remember to deploy panels.

- I also put a few struts between the bottom tank and the red tank, it was a bit wobbly.

Hope all that helps.

Alright thanks i'll redo that.

And this is only experimental, I wanna get into space and then come back to earth and land somewhere.