[jandrese]

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.

[rbanffy]

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.

[jandrese]

I guess it comes down to the details of your fictional FTL drive. A lot of times normal space momentum is not maintained in FTL, and gaining normal space momentum requires conventional rockets where delta-V is hugely expensive in terms of mass and volume.

[rbanffy]

I don't remember any sci-fi story with a jump drive mentioning this issue. There is one book, IIRC, Cassini Division, where a devastating attack is carried out by dragging one end of a wormhole at high speed to capture icy asteroids and launch them at a high velocity from the other end against a planetary target.