Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos
I don't think that's right. With the Bergenholm on your intrinsic velocity away from the gravitating mass ceases to have any effect, and all that matters is the resultant of vector addition of your thrust and gravity. A spaceship with inertia will in general orbit around a massive body, safely except for tidal strain. A free one will instantaneously acquire a superluminal velocity directly towards it. Go free wherethe gravity points towards a planet and you will near-instantly but harmlessly hit the ground. Do it where the gravity points towards a star or such and then, unless you are very quick to acquire some thrust, you will near-instantly contact its surface or come to a buoyant equilibrium within it, subject to terrible tidal strains and quiet possibly in a graviational field too strong for your motor to get you out of.
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The latter situation is what I was trying to refer to. As long as the ship's maximum acceleration of 324 gravities is greater than the gravity exerted by the star/whatever, then the ship can point its overall acceleration away from the star and escape from it. But if it gets closer than, say, 2.78 AU to the 4,154,000-solar-mass black hole at the center of the galaxy, where the gravity is greater than the ship's thrust, then things get dicey. (At which point various sorts of Heroic Measures may be attempted to defeat the Cold Equations, such as throwing furniture out the airlock, looking for any other ships similarly trapped to investigate, etc.)
Of course, that's only dealing with gravity - I don't know any rules-of-thumb for such bodies' radiation, magnetic, or other characteristics.