Num 5 won't do much of anything on the ground, it's the Kill Rot(ation) autopilot. Use it if you find yourself spinning and you need to point somewhere in particular.
As far as launching the shuttle, that's one of the things I've still not managed to do very well
As a general rule though, to get to orbit, go sideways more than you go up, but go up first. For the first part of the launch you should be pointed mostly vertical to get your ship out of the thick lower atmosphere; moving around down there is a big waste of fuel. Once you get up to say... 40km (other Orbinauts chime in here, I dunno) you should really pitched down quite a ways, giving yourself plenty of horizontal momentum. Another general rule: always launch in a more or less easterly direction, never west unless you have to - you'll be working against the rotation of the Earth that way.
You should be looking at your Orbit MFD as well, watching your ApA number (that's apoapsis altitude, your highest point in your orbit). Pressing "DST," I think it is, will swap that number from your radial altitude (distance from Earth's center) to your altitude above sea level. When it gets to roughly your desired orbit altitude (something over 200km likely), cut your engines and wait. Start looking at the ApT number, that's time until apoapsis, in seconds. You can hit the T key to increase the time warp, and R to decrease it, but don't miss your apoapsis!
When you're about 60 seconds out, hit the prograde autopilot, the [ key I believe, to align your ship with your velocity vector (point forward, basically). At about 20-15 seconds out, open the throttle all the way and keep burning. You're watching your PeA, periapsis altitude (lowest point in your orbit) and Ecc, eccentricity, which is a measure of how circular or hyperbolic your orbit is. You're shooting for a perfectly circular orbit, an eccentricity of 0, so that number should be decreasing. You probably won't get it all the way to 0 on your first try, so when it slows it's decreasing and starts increasing, cut your engines again! You should have raised your PeA to be more of less in a circular orbit now and if you're high enough to avoid the atmosphere, you should stay there! Yay!
This was probably a little confusing, so I highly recommend looking up some tutorial videos on how to get to orbit. I also recommend not trying to get to orbit with the shuttle on your first try. Use the DeltaGlider, it's much easier, but it uses the same principals, you just takeoff horizontally like a plane then start climbing as normal.
Good luck and happy orbiting!
