How to counter shuttle weight shift?

[panzerknoef]

So i've been trying to build a space shuttle but a problem I always seem to encounter is the shift in weight. It occurs at very low altittude (1200-1800m) I can slow it down by removing two of the fuel lines, but that leads to two of my shuutle engines shutting down and this just causes loss of control at higher altitudes. Please help me out, I really want to make a working shuttle for once!

This is my shuttle, the fuel lines I ment are the ones leading from the external tank to the shuttle side tanks.

As you can see: loss of control here:

If you need the craft file, please just ask

[Tex_NL]

One option to reduce it at least a bit is to remove the girder between the decoupler and the orange tank. You probably put that in to stop the nose gear clipping into the fuel tank but it serves no real purpose other than making the imbalance worse.

[TechnicalK3rbal]

Look at the center of mass / center of thrust markers.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Also, for added realism you should use RCS when in space instead of the engine (the real life shuttle was indeed powered by RCS).

Edited December 14, 2013 by KvickFlygarn87

[panzerknoef]

Maybe I wasn't completely clear, mine shuttle is pretty stable on liftoff, but because fuel is being used the weight of the shuttle quickly gets bigger than the weight of the external tank. This causes my shuttle to flip over and explode

[TechnicalK3rbal]

Create an action group to turn off the engines on the tank.

Edited December 14, 2013 by TechnicalK3rbal

[TechnicalK3rbal]

Also you might want to angle them more.