Why does momentum rotate with a ship?

[LameFox]

If you've never tried this, pick a distant object and travel drive dead at it. Then toggle off travel drive (or toggle off FA) without engaging your engines so you drift. Rotate to one side for a bit, then rotate back to face your object. Intuitively you should still be drifting toward it, but you're probably going sideways right now instead.

You can also pick a distant asteroid, travel drive just past one side of it, and use this same method to drift around it. You can nearly do a U turn.

What weird quirk of videogame physics is this? Why does momentum seem to rotate with our ship instead of carrying us in the direction we were thrusting in?

[Alan Phipps]

I guess that whatever allows you to teleport to other points in the galaxy at will also has a way around Newton's 2nd Law too. Imagine teleporting from your travel-driving/highway-using ship onto a station whilst retaining your original body's momentum throughout - you're now a bug-splat on some hard surface or hopefully just launched off into space if outside (hope you had a spacesuit on)!

I think this falls into the category of 'Why do X game spaceships have a top speed?' questions.

[LameFox]

I just assumed we are annihilated and then reconstructed every time, so the stuff we're made from has the same momentum as the ship...

[Alan Phipps]

Then your sudden departure should have an effect upon the ship you left. That momentum cannot be destroyed, only transferred.

[LameFox]

Ah, so that's why it acts differently when I'm not around.