driving at orbital velocity

[RedSun Rocketry]

using only rover wheels get into orbit around any body, secondary thrusters can be used to keep the craft on the ground longer but not to increase the craft's acceleration directly.

 the tiers are:

easy: use rover wheels on a moon to get into orbit around a planet

medium: use rover wheels on a planet or moon with atmosphere to get into orbit

hard: use rover wheels to generate enough speed to get into orbit around the sun

 

good luck to all, this challenge may be impossible.

[vyznev]

It's possible on Gilly, and was done in the micro-challenge thread a while ago. Here's my entry.

The second smallest moon in stock KSP is Minmus Pol, but it's not possible there, at least not using rover wheels in the normal way. None of the stock wheels have a maximum speed of over 120 m/s, which is about what you'd need for a Pol orbit at the altitude of the highest peaks.

It may be possible using the XL3 wheel differential steering trick/glitch/exploit, however, as demonstrated e.g. in this video.

Edited May 5, 2019 by vyznev
corrected per Aeroboi's post below

[Aeroboi]

1 hour ago, vyznev said:

It's possible on Gilly, and was done in the micro-challenge thread a while ago. Here's my entry.

The second smallest moon in stock KSP is Minmus, but it's not possible there, at least not using rover wheels in the normal way. None of the stock wheels have a maximum speed of over 160 m/s, which is about what you'd need for a Minmus orbit at the altitude of the highest peaks.

It may be possible using the XL3 wheel differential steering trick/glitch/exploit, however, as demonstrated e.g. in this video.

Correction, the second smallest is Pol.

 

7 hours ago, RedSun Rocketry said:

using only rover wheels get into orbit around any body, secondary thrusters can be used to keep the craft on the ground longer but not to increase the craft's acceleration directly.

 the tiers are:

easy: use rover wheels on a moon to get into orbit around a planet

medium: use rover wheels on a planet or moon with atmosphere to get into orbit

hard: use rover wheels to generate enough speed to get into orbit around the sun

 

good luck to all, this challenge may be impossible.

Have you ever tried this before.

As you might notice the rover wheels have max motor speeds and ultimately impact damage.

Rover wheels need ground traction to accelerate. If you use Pol and Gilly (the smallest rocks in the solar system) you could get into orbit on motor speeds. On Pol this will be next to impossible since the TR-2L wheels don't go much faster then 100m/s, however, you can use reaction torque to rotate the vessel  and try to catapult of the ground using high impact tolerant landing gear when nearing this velocity.

Then you still have the problem of delivering the final kick. If you hop on the surface accelerating then at some point you will fly off and coast to Apoapsis, but periapsis is still as high as the hill you launched of from.

So for orbital insertion you'll again have to catapult by decoupling the vessel like in stratzenblitz's video to orbit on jet engines only video, although less drastic since Pol isn't that massive, this being said I think Minmus can be done through this method also.
 

Edited May 5, 2019 by Aeroboi

[RedSun Rocketry]

minnmus would probably be the best bet because you could get it into a kerbin orbit,

 

 

or, you could use a series of asteroids in orbit to raise periapsis however, this challenge may just be impossible. that near impossibility is one reason that this challenge has no deadline, if a kerbalneer could build a craft capable of this I would be EXTREMELY impressed.

[RedSun Rocketry]

I am extremely impressed, good job VYZNEV

[Vanamonde]

Some posts accidentally submitted to the wrong thread have been removed. 

[Chumpes]

Physics demonstrate that reaching orbit around a single spherical object starting from its surface requires thrust when into space (or other attracting bodies). Corollary it is impossible to reach orbit without any thrust above ground...

your orbit is an elipse that passes again at the same point after a complete turn around the body : your trajectory will intercet the ground at the end of the first orbit.

the previous is not true when the body-to-orbit is not spherical (mountains) or when approximated calculations are implemented such as in ksp (SOI), or when multiple attracting objects are involved.

bye 

Edited May 6, 2019 by Chumpes

[arkie87]

On 5/6/2019 at 11:27 AM, Chumpes said:

Physics demonstrate that reaching orbit around a single spherical object starting from its surface requires thrust when into space (or other attracting bodies). Corollary it is impossible to reach orbit without any thrust above ground...

your orbit is an elipse that passes again at the same point after a complete turn around the body : your trajectory will intercet the ground at the end of the first orbit.

the previous is not true when the body-to-orbit is not spherical (mountains) or when approximated calculations are implemented such as in ksp (SOI), or when multiple attracting objects are involved.

bye 

If you are allowed downward thrust i.e. thrust perpendicular to your velocity vector, it should be possible. Otherwise, as you approach orbital velocity, your weight drops to zero, and your wheels loose traction

[RedSun Rocketry]

On 5/9/2019 at 2:50 PM, arkie87 said:

If you are allowed downward thrust

you are allowed to use downward thrust to stay on the ground