Ok, so I was far away from the core worlds. I had settled a new colony (no real idea what I'm doing on that front), and accidentally scrapped the starport (mis-click, was broke, but rolled with it trying to avoid save scumming).
I wandered a bit too far out, fought the red planet, a few other odds and ends, and ended up drifting back to my colony sector with zero supplies, and zero fuel.
I had hoped maybe the free port would lead the colony to have supplies/fuel in its market (it did not), so with zero supplies, zero fuel, zero else in the sector, I stowed away all my ships except the crappiest one, and hovered over the planet intent on lasting long enough for the month to roll over, so I had credits to build industry, to rebuild the star-port, and hopefully find a way out.
That's when it hit, the ship I was on, with zero fuel/supplies finally had a fatal failure, and I got the dialogue about life pods, escaping, scraping together some new ships. Long story short, made my way back out with some scrappy ships, fuel, etc. intent on getting my fleet re-started, only to discover I no longer had the Janus device (IE: couldn't jump to the gate in the adjacent system, the reason I had colonized this planet)....
I finally find my way there (the long way around), only to find that the Janus device isn't in my inventory on the station, it's not in storage, there's no wreck of the failed ship I can detect, etc. I go to the adjacent sector anyway (where the gate is now in the middle of the sun?! I swear there's no way I scanned it there previously!), and try to jump, but get the same error (having the full previous fleet, inventory, etc.
So ... is "dying" (aka loosing your last active ship) with the Janus device just the end of the game basically (I mean, unless someone wants to play end-game without gates? Which sounds pretty unappealing to be honest).
FWIW, I'm playing a modded game with Nexerelin and Industrial Revolution, among a number of other faction and related mods, if that matters?