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by badwolf 2132 days ago
Also importantly, you have to slow down at the other end.
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If your ship can only handle 1G of acceleration, would that not also mean that it could only handle 1G deceleration as well? That means starting to slow down halfway to your destination.
I think it would be more like you time your arrival with the conjunction of some gas giants in the destination solar system and aerobrake multiple times to get your speed low enough so you can aerobrake on your destination planet.

Bringing enough fuel to decelerate the same way you accelerated isn't usually practical, inflating your rocket by 15x its original size or more.

One of my pet peeves about sci-fi is how ships jump out of FTL into a perfect orbit around a planet. The concept of temporal dampeners is laughable even after suspension of disbelief to allow for FTL.
Sci-fi-grade engines are always fun. If you want to jump straight into a stable orbit, just add the right velocity component to your exit point. Or select a synchronous orbit.

Any sci-fi-grade navigation computer can do that.

Even a Geo orbit is an orbit. I guess you could drop out at a Lagrange point.

Of course depending on hour your Sci-Fi FTL engines work you could build up speed by stopping up high in the gravity well, let the planet accelerate you to orbital velocity, then jump sideways into an orbit once you're moving fast enough.

Or you can just use the automatic preset that puts you in a stable orbit depending on the distance from the surface you chose. The default is synchronous (a.k.a. "standard orbit").

These functions are a hard requirement for passenger transportation anyway because you need to match orbit with the station you are docking with. Protocol is to jump to a random position a couple light seconds from the port, get authorization, then short jump to your assigned docking exit point.