It's pretty much same from my Offset the vessel thread, except this one does not require any launch clamps.
From this theory, I was experimenting offsetting things would save fuel to go interplanetary. Until one day, I was working in my career mode, and found that I haven't unlocked that TT-18A Launch Stability Enhancer. I thought that it should work fine without that launch clamps, so I tried offsetting with that way.
The results are very satisfying: It works.
However, since the career I'm playing has some mods, and one of them is 'Editor Extension Redux', I've decided to recreate that in Vanilla KSP 1.1.2.
The results are, again, very satisfying: It works again.
This would brought joy to me till I have to post this thread to tell the world what I've found. Well, I could beat all 'get to sub-orbital' challenge with this trick and without fuel. Heheheheheh....
Anyway, here's a way to do it:
Make a rocket, no launch clamps, ensure the first stage decoupling (can be empty decoupling).
Offset them, make sure they're far enough to be in space, but not too far (I'll tell you why).
Launch it.
Easy, right? The only hardest part is the step 2.
Well, I'll tell you why the first stage should decouple, even it is empty decoupling. This is needed to update your space craft in space, without that, you'll still be in space, but the game thinks that you're in launchpad. It would say 'at Launchpad' in the map view'. Instead decoupling, you can go EVA and then board again. I don't know if this breaks things, but with decoupler I managed to transport many tourists to suborbital with this way in my modded KSP career.
Why you shouldn't offset too far from KSC? Because, your space craft will get stuck in space and you cannot trigger the staging sequence. I suspect the limits to be about 100km altitude from Kerbin, or 360km horizontal offset. That means no free KEO for you guys. You'll still fall down, so you still need thrust to get to orbit.
How do I offset them, anyway? Well, I used 'Editor Extenstion Redux' and offsetted while seeing how far I offset via debug (not the alt+f12, but from the mod). However, It works in Vanilla KSP, although we cannot tell how far you offset the vessel (so you're basically offsetting in the dark, with trial and error). In the end, you might even have a .craft file already in space when you shared your .craft file!
Screenshots:
That's it!