How to build a proper shuttle?

[adjit]

This is the shuttle that I have built. For the most part it functions really well with some good throttle control. My boosters get my up to around 45,000 meters, but thats where things start to fall apart. As soon as the boosters cut off I try and do a MECO as well to stop the ship from flipping forward continuously until eventually it just rips itself apart. But that doesn't always work. I want to try and limit the use of RCS when balancing it out, just some good throttle control on my part. But any touch of power when the boosters are gone and the ship starts to flip end over end.

Some help would be appreciated. I am using the B9 aerospace mod.

[legoheli]

What you need is some form of engine with HUGE gimbal or ount your engines on hinges that you can control. My shuttle-esque craft work like that.

[adjit]

What you need is some form of engine with HUGE gimbal or ount your engines on hinges that you can control. My shuttle-esque craft work like that.

So if i say up my thrust vectoring to 100 for those 3 main engines you think that will work?

[KrazyKrl]

Remember that on the space shuttle the engines are only lit during ascent. The vehicle is not designed for massive inclination shifts or extra-orbital travel. The space shuttle main engine is vectored quite significantly to offset the weight of the main tank.

You could have, say, 3 engines though, 2 being ascent engines that are tilted, and a third one in-line with the vehicle itself.

But the space shuttle design itself was pretty flawed. It's a cargo hauler design that is very unsafe in practice. NASA is going back to the old, disposable, vertical launch vehicles. And they are going to use the much safer dual launch system with orbital cargo rendezvous. It's easier to abort a launch when you can just decouple a capsule and hit the ejection tower SRBs. Instead of needing to move the shuttle crew on two decks to the hatch so they can bail out.

[steffen_anywhere]

Ok so I've quite recently started playing KSP and once I got good at all the basics, I just wanted to build a Space Shuttle I simply love the design and fact that it is/was the only "reusable" spacecraft ever flown (true for the most part...).

Designing a working shuttle in KSP is extremely hard compared to a conventional rocket. The only way you can counteract the non-symmetrical design is by asymmetric thrust by the orbiter's (a.k.a. Shuttle's) main engines so that overall the centre of thrust generated by the SRBs and the Shuttle's main engines intersects with the centre of mass of the whole thing with external tank and SRBs, etc... Then, after booster separation, this has to be true as well!!! I found this the hardest part in my design.

Here's my attempt at a reasonably realistic shuttle using KW Rocketry only in orbit (well suborbit cuz I kinda ran out of fuel during the test launch ) (for the big SRBs mostly) (i'll add pics on the pad and during ascent later if u like, but so far I don't have any cuz the thing is so hard to fly that it keeps me occupied and unable to take screenshots )

The shuttle's main engines are tilted up by 10 degrees for the reasons I explained earlier. The produce 1050kN of thrust in total (with the SRBs producing 1100kN each). As I said, if it interests you, I can upload screenshots on pad, booster ascend, after booster separation, etc...

I also used the small Rockomax 24-77 engines at the top of the external tank as support stabilisers to control the shuttle's pitch. As with the real one, it ascends on its back...

As far as your design is concerned, I can't really help much without further explanations of why it becomes uncontrollable... (The super gimbal engine solution won't work that well trust me unless you maybe use mechjeb. I don't use it myself, so I don't know... ASAS will rip the craft apart using the gimbal force )

Hope this helps...

Steffen