With two bodies it is possible, but hard, to make it out of the start without getting hit: I can usually do it about 3/4 of the time if I head through one of the two gaps and try to loop around the smaller body so both bodies end up slingshotting away. But with three or more bodies, there's no chance of getting out without getting hit haha. That's something I really don't like about the game, but I didn't have time to play around with other starting configurations.
I probably could've spent a whole extra week just tweaking all of the physics!