By the equivalence principle, I should not notice myself and the rocket passing through the event horizon. However, since classically no object can escape the black hole once it passes the event horizon, it seems as though the flywheel should break as it passes through the event horizon, because for every piece going one way, the antipodal piece of it goes the opposite direction. Once the flywheel is half-way through the event horizon, the part of the flywheel inside the black hole cannot come out even though it must rotate, so it seems as though a part of the flywheel would split in half. How does this square with the equivalence principle? I am aware that the equivalence principle only applies locally in the limit of smaller and smaller regions. For example, tidal effects can allow you to distinguish regions with gravity and regions without gravity. However, I don't think that's enough to resolve my quandary. We can assume the black hole is sufficiently large so that no issues of tidal effects or spaghettifications occur. We can make the black hole as large as we like and the rocket as small as we like to remove second-order gravitational effects, and it seems like my paradox involving the flywheel crossing the Schwarzschild radius still exists. Am I wrong in this assertion?