Flipping Space Shuttle

[bigpapabearxx]

So on reentry my shuttle flips down until it is facing retrograde instead of prograde. It is not the center of lift compared to the COM, because the lift points up and i rotate down. How do i fix this?

Edited June 30, 2013 by bigpapabearxx

[UmbralRaptor]

Do you have pictures and/or a .craft file? It's impossible to say for sure without these.

My immediate guesses would be drag-related instability (especially if it has intakes near the front) or a shifted center of mass (depending on fuel consumption).

[arq]

I still believe that this is a CoL/CoM issue. I frequently experience the same thing. You can't use the flip direction as an indicator. It will flip any direction (usually the nearest) to get the CoL behind the CoM.

My solution is thus the standard one: your shifting fuel load moves the CoM behind the CoL, you need to move your CoL further back.

[Supernovy]

One tip that I heard for this is to add a small part as an indicator to where the CoL is in the VAB, then zooming in once the fuel is depleted to see where the CoM is with respect to the CoL, as the camera centres on the CoM.

[SDIR]

The only thing I can suggest is to dump all fuel and oxidiser before landing. Just disable all of the liquid fuel flow first and rev up the rocket. There should be no thrust but the amount of oxidiser will deplete, and once there is no more oxidizer, then re-enable the liquid fuel and dump that as well.

Click the green arrows to disable the resource, and it should turn into a red circle with a slash through it.

[bigpapabearxx]

I figured it out. I just moved a lot of the excess parts in the front to the back so the back has more drag. Works perfectly. Thanks everyone.