Space without fuel

[Turf]

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:

1. Make a rocket, no launch clamps, ensure the first stage decoupling (can be empty decoupling).
2. Offset them, make sure they're far enough to be in space, but not too far (I'll tell you why).
3. 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!

Edited June 4, 2016 by Anbang11

[Codraroll]

So... you've effectively made a space elevator?

 

Nice!

[Mastikator]

I look forward to pictures. 2860 km is keostationary orbit btw. If you can get it that far out it'd it would be in orbit and not move away from the clamps.

[Turf]

Updated the OP: Screenshots.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

So how is this any different practically speaking from placing the ship there via Hyperedit?

[severedsolo]

10 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

So how is this any different practically speaking from placing the ship there via Hyperedit?

Well, apart from the fact that you'd have to spend 2k delta v to get it to stay there. The OP's post clearly shows that speed is unaffected, so you'd have to thrust to reach orbital velocity (and fairly quickly too I imagine).

This is truly creative and awesome, I may have to try it.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 minute ago, severedsolo said:

Well, apart from the fact that you'd have to spend 2k delta v to get it to stay there. The OP's post clearly shows that speed is unaffected, so you'd have to thrust to reach orbital velocity (and fairly quickly too I imagine).

This is truly creative and awesome, I may have to try it.

If you're just going to cheat in the first place why are you concerned about Dv? Just turn infinite fuel on.

[Archgeek]

13 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

So how is this any different practically speaking from placing the ship there via Hyperedit?

 

2 minutes ago, severedsolo said:

Well, apart from the fact that you'd have to spend 2k delta v to get it to stay there. The OP's post clearly shows that speed is unaffected, so you'd have to thrust to reach orbital velocity (and fairly quickly too I imagine).

This is truly creative and awesome, I may have to try it.

Blast, partially ninja'd.  However, there are more ways:

Way 1: you can do it without having Hyperedit.

Way 2: It is much more limited than Hyperedit, as you cannot go beyond a certain range, or input a starting velocity beyond what's there from rotating with the planet.

And it might well be a bit over 2k, as you also need the TWR to get it done before hitting the atmosphere, and the closer your are to that line, the more downward velocity you have to kill to avoid dipping in anyway and losing apo height.

[cantab]

It's a cool trick, but to the extent that anything in KSP is "cheating", this is cheating.

[Slam_Jones]

Exploiting an unintended feature (aka Bug) to achieve that which would normally take work (as defined by the medium... in this case skipping the atmosphere stage, thus cutting out cost and difficulty)... textbook cheating.  But hey, whatever makes you happy.  I mean, mods like MechJeb and HyperEdit exist, and it's a single-player game, so it doesn't affect anyone other than you... but still.

[p1t1o]

Cheating or not, why do this?

I suppose its fun to play with a system and see what you can do, how you can bend/break the rules (you think that's air you're breathing right now?) but it is far and away from space travel and gives us spacers the heeby- jeebies!