How flat is "Flat Space"?
The idea of "Flat Space", an area of space-time with minimal, preferably zero, gravitational curvature, is an important concept in many Sci-fi universes, often those with "jump-drive" based FTL travel. I'm working on one such universe at the moment. The gravitational "edge" of our solar system is thought to be the outer edge of Oort Cloud. If that is the case, and some of the size estimates of that region are correct, then the outer edge of the sun's gravitational influence is actually within Alpha Centauri's gravity well.
So my question is, is there really anywhere outside the influence of stellar gravity that would form a completely flat jump site or do we have to settle for areas that are "flat enough" near the edge of star systems or have artificially created jump zones?
Related but separate Gravitational flatness, the topography of Lagrange "points", as the answer to this question points out there is nowhere natural within a solar system that works for this.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/114781. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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