With the best hull the gas pockets only hit you for about 1/3 of your health. After a couple hits you have to return to the surface or use the health packs.

Here is what I remember of the blueprints: (which are goldium only)

Regenerative Hull: Regens your health pretty fast

Hyperdrive Engine: Infinite free matter transmitters

Wormhole Cargo: infinite cargo hold, the metals still weigh alot though so at some point you won't be able to fly up.

Some kind of radiator that converts magma into $

A fuel tank that refills itself partially whenever you hit a gas pocket

Multi Drill (you get it when you beat challenge mode): drills through rocks.

You can make epic bank just from one run down, no refueling/repairing. I believe my grand total before I killed Satan was like 4.6 billion

Also in Goldium Edition:

sometimes there is a martian fuel company that you can contact that gives you money for "natural gas" in the earth, basically every time you drill

if you fly high enough, you get some $ and a protective angel from God.