Interesting reasoning, but nah, Big Johnny, the Law of Conservation of E is about as close to "truth" as we can get in this life.
You mention gravity? It's not "free." Gravity is very much bound by energy.
This will seem a silly example, but surely you've seen Star Wars before and you're familiar with the Death Star.
For the heathens who don't know, the Death Star is a 160 klick-wide spherical battlestation. It has the ability to blow Earth-like planets completely apart in a split-second. It also has very powerful faster-than-light engines which allow it to traverse the Star Wars galaxy, which is just a bit bigger than our own galaxy (the Milky Way) in a matter of hours or days.
OK: so, in Episode IV, where we meet Han and company for the first time, this evil, high-ranking fucker in the Galactic Empire, Grand Moff Tarkin, was given command of the Death Star, right? (Tarkin was portrayed by epically lean old actor Peter Cushing.) Well, HIS boss, the Emperor Palpatine a.k.a. Darth Sidious, sent his right-hand man, Darth Vader, to capture this little ship and arrest Princess Leia (we'll overlook the fact that we later learn she's actually Vader's daughter), because she had info that could potentially fuck over the Death Star and but good.
Blah blah blah ... the relevant part:
Tarkin decides to test the Death Star's planet-killing weapon on Leia's homeworld, Alderaan. She protests and whines, Tarkin ignores her, then the planet is completely blown to shit after the Death Star fires. The remnants of the globe fly apart so ridiculously fast, it was obvious the Death Star's shot was actually major overkill.
My point? LOL. Simple: anything with mass has what's called gravitational binding energy. The more massive the body, the greater the GBE. Something the size of Earth or thereabouts has a mind-blowing GBE.
To overcome that gravity-based force the way the Death Star did requires -- yep -- almost unfathomable amounts of energy. One of my old pals, a Star Wars enthusiast and physics expert, reckoned the blast that shattered Alderaan so violently contained more energy than our Sun -- yes, our SUN -- has released since the time of Moses.
Seems crazy, I know, but it took that much energy to pulverize Alderaan. And at the risk of being even more repetitive, what did that energy do?
Yep: as I said, it was expended overcoming the very gravitational forces that held the planet together.
Much love as I have for ya, my Carolinian bro (no homo?
), no: gravity is literally bound by the same laws that govern energy. I'm tipsy, whatwith the Star Wars example and all, but perhaps something more straight-forward to posit would be NASA trying to launch a spacecraft into orbit. Do they or do they not have to burn all kinds of fuel just to get a tiny shuttle into space? If gravity was somehow exempt, well ... I think you're more than with me by now.
OH: and any jackass who calls me a Star Wars geek, nerd or whatever ... you're goddamned right