You only need the thrusters to get up/down from planet surface. My first trip, I had thruster attached to my VTOL and flew from planet to station and then out amongst the other stations/planets. Second trip I hitched a ride with someone else up from the planet, and then spawned my VTOL without thruster at the station and flew to Arkadia, Pirate Base, Rocktropia and back to Calypso. It was 30 minutes from Calypso to Arkadia, but I didn't take a direct route, more of an arc to avoid the obvious path.
The only time I hit "can't enter deep space" was when I played around going "up" and "down" to test the max range of Z-coords (+- 4000 meters btw). Although each of the planets is very close to the border of the map, so could see coming in too wide and hitting the map border on the way to the planet/station. But you just turn away and can keep going. I don't think it has anything to do with downloaded content. Either you have space content downloaded and can enter space, or you don't and you get booted from the ship as you try to leave orbit from the planet surface.
VTOL mk1 used about 80 pec of fuel from Calypso to Arkadia. About another 80 pec to get from Arkadia to Pirate Base, but did a lot of playing around and some looping back, probably 60-65 pec if I flew direct. And I'd guess about 20-25 minutes traveling time.
Trip from Pirate Base to Roctropia was much quicker, about 10 minutes. Forgot to note the fuel usage.
Thrusters only appear to decay on entry/exit from planets, and the UL thruster decays 9 pec each way.
-Mack
P.S. I had no problem with pkers, and only ran into people after I got well into the safe zones around the various stations. When in doubt, go vertical...come in from high or low, avoiding the center Z-coords.
P.P.S. Safe zones around stations appear to be spherical in shape (around 1000-1500 meters radius), so you can fly right over one without entering safe zone if you are "high" or "low" enough.
