Honestly, you don't even need to gate things long. Legitimately, I would suggest doing something like this:
1. You start in the game. If it's a new game, it gives a piece of dialogue with something like "Hey there, you look new to flying an interstellar vessel. You need some help navigating?" The player has to choose either "Yes (Highly Recommended For New Players)" or "No (Will Skip Tutorial, For Advanced Players Only)" and can't do anything else until they do. If they choose No, it's the same as skipping the tutorial and giving them everything. If they choose Yes, it initiates a gated tutorial. The rest of this is for the tutorial.
2. The person on the radio tells you to head towards the the place to get a job. It actively will tell you how to do it. So first, you gotta do it manually. So the player learns how velocity works, and they're also told to autobrake. The dialogue about how to move and turn goes away once you're moving towards the target. The dialogue about how to autobrake goes away once you're at the destination and trigger getting the dialogue (which, if memory serves, takes a moment to see if you're slow enough so it's the perfect time to change things).
3. Radio dude explains how to get jobs. For the tutorial, it only has one job available, cargo.
4. Player does first job. Again by manual, but no dialogue this time.
5. Return trip back to place to get jobs. This time, you teach them about Autopilot and how to use it and any inherent risks to relying fully on it.
6. New job is available, this time a combat one. Player is told how they can use autopilot to get there, but it can't do the fighting for them.
7. Player does entire mission.
8. Continue this process for anything else the player needs to know. Once all done, you end your tutorial.
In short, integrate a tutorial into the gameplay and in a way that allows advanced players to go wild.