AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 237
ARES III SOL 235
[08:32] WATNEY: Morning, guys. I’ve been looking at the Whinnybago mods preparing to start stripping out Rover 1, and I’ve run into something I think you’ve overlooked. Right now Rover 1 is acting as radio relay station from Pathfinder to the suit radio antenna we’re using to get signal in the Hab. Once I disconnect Rover 1 from Hab power and start gutting it, we lose that relay. Rover 2 can do the same thing, except whenever we go out to the cave farm it’ll lose line of sight to the Hab, which means it loses signal from Pathfinder’s low-gain antenna. (The high-gain, of course, stays pointed at Earth or Hermes, whichever signal is stronger.)
Losing two-thirds of the transmission window like that strikes me as a bad idea. Got any better ones?
[08:58] JPL: When we sent that procedure we assumed Rover 2 would be used at most once per week, with the ponies walking to and from the cave like they usually do. Did. Looks like we need to revisit that assumption with Dragonfly not currently in the picture.
[09:28] WATNEY: I’ve been thinking while waiting for your response. It would be a bit more work, but it’s possible to remove the entire pressure vessel intact rather than cutting it off as the existing procedure would have it. We’d have to rebuild the wiring and hose harness mount points to keep them in place when the rover combo makes a turn or navigates a change in elevation, but I can solve that problem here.
The main problem is, the Rover 1 chassis needs to retain most if not all of the power distribution system so it can run its wheels and connect with the Friendship internal power and mounted solar panels. That means I’ll have to build a brand new power system almost from scratch to run the radio inside the discarded Rover 1 hull. That will eat up a ton of my remaining electrical repair supplies, and as long as we have direct contact through Pathfinder I don’t want to risk wasting resources when I can have you guys dump things on tables and tape them together until Sy Liebergott dumps it on the CAPCOM terminal.
Does that help any?
[10:01] JPL: Why not mount Rover 1’s computer and radio inside Friendship? That will have power the whole time.
[10:27] WATNEY: I can’t read the pony wiring charts. I’m not willing to risk frying irreplaceable gear, especially the backup radio. I’d need Dragonfly’s help for that. I don’t think Starlight Glimmer knows enough about electronics to be helpful here.
[10:54] JPL: Okay, Mark, we’ll get back to work on that. For the time being go ahead and pull the seats and the life support except for the emergency O2 tank. That means you’ll have to have a pony suit with you for any IVA in Rover 1 to provide air circulation, but there’s not much else you can pull without compromising the radio.
[11:19] WATNEY: Roger. Going to the cave now; don’t wait up. BTW, is there any software in the Hab computers that strips audio out of video? My suit cam was running in the cave yesterday during k;op’
[11:47] JPL: Sorry, but we never thought you’d need any such thing. Is everything all right there?
[12:13] WATNEY: Just fine. Starlight Glimmer was just clarifying that “we do not talk about x” includes all modes of communication whatever.
[12:14] WATNEY: Correction: all modes except interpretive dance.
[12:39] JPL: We’ll look forward to that log entry. Starlight, sorry if it seems nosy, but it’s for science.
[18:11] WATNEY: Back from the cave, just read your last reply. Learned something new today: an arm gesture the ponies call the “high hoof.” It’s basically flipping the bird for species that don’t have more than one digit. I think I’ll let you all fill in the context for yourselves.
These ponies and their weird cultural taboos...fortunately humanity is a much more enlightened and rational species.
edit: in case it wasn't obvious, that was deeply sarcastic
That last line is freaking gold.
I think it's just the thought of cartoon ponies flipping people off that amuses me.
So.... WHY do they not talk about their random musical outbursts?
So NASA is going to get to see the spontaneous musical number? Can't wait to see how they take that.
Also, what's k;op supposed to mean?
8932017 Because they don't really know where they come from, and because they're either triggered by intense feelings or reveal intense feelings. Ponies being ponies, these are mostly positive, but not always, and sometimes these feelings are really personal.
8932022 Hear it, but not see it. The camera on Mark's suit wasn't really pointing at anything, so all that got picked up reliably was sound.
And the random keys are what happens when somebody (or somepony) stops you from typing by slapping their appendage of choice on the right half of the keyboard.
8932024
That's... not gonna cut it for NASA or future groups that have to work with Equestrians in normalizing relations between the two worlds. Psychologists and behavioural experts will be the first to want to understand the mechanisms and effects of the Spontaneous Equestrian Musicals if not their exact causes.
Sure, not wanting to talk about an act that heavily reminds someone of the relatvely traumatic event is a natural response, but this is something that will have to be addressed sooner or later; as any psychologist will tell you, bottling up your emotions because you feel that it's something too intimate helps no one.
8932055 Obviously Mark and Venkat agree with you.
8932024
Makes sense, so it's like the problem in the Buffy musical episode (before the spontaneous combustion anyway).
Though I still like that they all can speak perfectly when singing. I wonder if the ponies were speaking English, Mark was speaking Equestrian, or they all were speaking Friendship. And if the later, whether anyone else can understand what they said without magic...or EVERYONE can understand what they said without knowing the language.
(I'm overthinking because I really like the story, in case it wasn't obvious)
And if I can get my act together, you'll eventually have music sheets of the song.
Pity that Mars is too warm, or they couldve poured water down the Hab, Farm track to make a sled track and slid along it with outrigger brakes? Oh well, another expedition, another time.
If thruster activation is affecting the Martian atmosphere, is the magic battery pulses trying to make pyroclastic style blast bursts above the Farm on a daily resonant basis?
As for power of song? I think of my Dog, Brighteyes. I phone my Dad.? Cats in the Cradle. I hear Sia, Rainbow? Blade Runner.
When falling unconcious due to three infected teeth on the way to the dentist for emergancy extraction. 2 unlimited, Get Ready For This to smash my way through.
Hmm, better listen to some Snap and Corona before sleeping.
All I have to say is that if the ponies refuse to talk about the heartsong, and then it happens in front of the wrong people and they STILL refuse to talk about it... well, not even Chrysalis's political shrewdness will help the Equestrians' cause. Hell, even leaving it at "it's extremely personal" or simply stating "it's a cultural thing" would be a better policy than following the rules of Fight Club on this one...
RE: Starlight slapping the keyboard
https://xkcd.com/1530/
Kris did that really well, all the keys were centered around the home row -- slightly above -- right next to the enter key.
Ahhhh thanks for the shoutout Kris! That was super cool and Im very flattered. <3 Also HAHA so the song WAS recorded, kinda hoped that would happen. XD Cant wait for THAT to get released to earth's populace!
somehow this comic came to mind:
https://ladyanidraws.deviantart.com/art/MLP-Hog-Tied-427065991
8932024
Alright, I suppose that's fair enough. If you're within their own culture, you get why. Mark and those from Earth do not though. I would think they could at least offer some explanation to Mark since he just got swept up into one and doesn't understand WTF just happened.
8931663
The setup is not unlike Star Trek's, you have a warp drive for going really fast in open space, then you have the impulse engines for much slower and precise movement like orbital insertion and evasive maneuvers. What the pony's ship is missing is navigation shields to keep small stuff from punching holes through the hull and crew inside.
Sadly, Equestria hasn't quite figured out how to harness Chaos magic so as to reverse gravity in a localized area, say, just above a flat launch pad. No need for explosive engines, just strap in and enjoy free-fall into space. Of course, it would also cause everything else in that column to fall up including air so it could be a bumpy ride and not terribly good for the environment either. Hmm, maybe a real scientist could chime in with what would happen?
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Explaining why they don't talk about it would be good, and possibly should have happened in chapter.
But the fact they don't talk about the heartsong itself makes perfect sense. Discussing the known mechanics is one thing, and thats likely going to be expected (and Twilight and the like can probably do that). But while Kris mentioned the fact it can be traumatic and we have seen the scale heartsongs can reach on the show, we haven't discussed what this can lead to when dealing with traumatic events.
A heartsong about someone being abused is possible. Or Rape. And PTSD suffers singing a heartsong is very likely. Or coming out of the closet. And taking that a step further, the most likely time to break out into song is when you are trying to reveal this kind of info to a psychiatrist, friend or family member.
Going to your family and preparing to reveal that you were gay, and suddenly breaking into a song and dance that moves what is meant to be a private discussion into the street and involves DOZENS of other people, especially if your family reject you in that SAME SONG, and you can see why its a cultural rule that stuff that is said in a heartsong is NOT TALKED ABOUT.
Heartsongs make the private public. And everyone in Equestria has likely had one of these moments where something they would rather only 1 or 2 people knowing gets aired publicly. Its akin to spreading the most emotionally scarring gossip.
8932199
If I had chaos magic under some form of control (wait, oxymoron, darnit...) I'd actually take away the ship's mass and hide it somewhere. Or maybe even the mass of everything in a particular sphere. If you managed to take away ALL of it, you could even accelerate to lightspeed! And just radically reducing it lets you do truly obscene things with rocket equations.
Honestly though I wouldn't want chaos magic anywhere NEAR a spaceship. You want everything to work completely reliably without any fuss, and it's sort of against the nature of chaos to be industrially produced. That would virtually guarantee it goes wrong somehow to make up for it. So IF you did it, you'd want to do it for your super special unique one of a kind starship rather than for a star fleet.
8932055
If I may provide a counter point, 'Hi Mark, how's your sex life?'
Some things are private. Just because somebody wants to know about them does not mean they get to. Humanity can make the demand but it's unlikely to get answered if the other side truly doesn't want to. Just as is the case with several things going the other way.
8932199 One interesting thing is that cancelling gravity is not the same as cancelling linear momentum. So if all you do is turn off gravity, without actually boosting upwards, you would continue moving at the speed of Earth's rotation- upwards of nine hundred miles an hour- but in a straight line rather than the curve of the Earth. For the first few minutes it would look like you were drifting upwards from the ground, but then you'd notice the difference as the Earth curved away and you appeared to both rise and fly forward faster and faster. I don't have the math to plot out how that would work, though.
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Acceleration due to circular motion is v2/r. Plug in 460 m/s for v (near the equator) and 6.37e6 m for r, and you get an acceleration of 0.033 m/s2. After a full minute, you would be drifting away from the ground at 2 m/s.
8932273
No no. It's more like what just happened with Dragonfly, except less likely to give someone a serious condition and more likely to bring in a lot of unknowing people.
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This is probably not the equation you're looking for. It would be more like throwing a discus; the ship follows a circular path until the gravity is turned off, then it follows a straight line except for atmospheric effects.
So if you start at the equator and suddenly ignore both gravity and "wind," you'll be 100 miles up in about 51 minutes. But you'll be traveling at the same piddling Mach 1.38 you were on the ground, not nearly enough to maintain orbit.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2018/2/17/1657839__safe_artist-colon-tjpones_pinkie+pie_dialogue_earth+pony_female_grayscale_mare_middle+finger_monochrome_pony_raised+hoof_solo_thumbs+up_tradit.png
8932206
I feel like while you have some points, you're leaving out the evidence from the show that heartsongs are voluntary. Case in point: the joke in one episode where one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders STARTS to sing, but one of the others stops her, saying, "No time for a song!" It was one of the biggest meta jokes and also evidences that heartsongs are an acknowledged "thing". I think you really have to want to be involved in the song for it to work. There's also cases of solo heartsongs (see Spike's "Changelings Can Change" or whatever the title is). So while they do indeed come from very emotional places oftentimes, I don't think that means that they don't respect the singer(s)'s wishes on who is involved. A private family event would probably only include those in the room, whereas happier songs where the pony clearly wants to share their joy rope in the whole town.
Basically I agree that it makes sense why ponies wouldn't want to talk about what goes into their heartsongs, but maybe not for the exact reasons you mentioned. I don't see heartsongs as quite so much of an all-powerful free-will-defying force as they are a magical way for expressing your true emotions, which ponies in the right mindset may allow themselves to be swept up in if they feel the singer wishes them to be included.
Heheh, they have it on record.
Now we need hard data for exact spatial boundaries between flipping someone off and other hoof gestures.
Idungetit.
Why pictures of Spitfire's... 'bomb bay' are fine, yet the song is off-limits?
What's so special about it?
8932517
The contents of the heartsong itself are the no-go zone, as they're a reminder of a pain that is still fresh in the minds of the Friendship's crew. I personally understand and sympathize with their excuse, but refusing to confront it isn't healthy. As 8932430 points out, there's significant evidence that indicates heartsongs are a voluntary event. So why can't Mark relay to Earth about the event while keeping the contents confidential? Heck, the Equestrians could offer them songs that aren't as private or as painful as this one was as examples.
This Fight Club attitude will only lead to problems, and Dragonfly is living proof of that. If neither Earth or Mark point this out, I'll be severely disappointed.
I love that musical numbers operate on Fight Club rules.
8932548
Hell yes, it has to be voluntary, othervise it's just a magical equivalent of stress vomit and that's just gross.
I kinda expected Mark to shut down the desire to join in, but I guess the song hit just the right cord.
8932094
Yeah, good one!
8932472
It's all about intent.
8932273
YOU ARE TEARING ME APART LISA!!!
But can you talk about why you don't talk about it? How many layers need to be applied here?
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pics.me.me/did-not-ht-her-i-did-not-oh-himark-31870411.png
Funny enough, it looked like Starlight did that gesture in show, during Cutie Mark Rematch, after Twilight missed her and hit Rainbow
8932703
dunno about NASA , but our space agency and similar high risk enterprises go that far as well. It is either a significant source of risk or resource, dependinding if it destabilizes or support subject's psyche.
Also, pause before last inter... er, JPL message means that Earthside was either seized by bout of group laugher or were discussing the implications.
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i know its going to be ask sooner or later but if that usb dose have music and video games.... how the ponies going to play the games i can see fireball playing them easy but kinda hard with hooves
8932917 The last JPL message came as quick as lightspeed turnaround permitted. It was Watney's response that was delayed, because the crew left for the cave without waiting for that last Earth reply.
it looks as if plans are shaping up. well before the radio problem.
Taking into account their current situation, they'd better be figuring that stuff out already
Status update: I've finished transcribing River Babble's version of the first Starlight Glimmer verse: i.imgur.com/YabEHfy.png
I'm going to focus on this one first, then on Kris's melody version.
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I am conflicted, as while yes that DID happen, and it certainly looked like a heartsong, I would argue thats the exception not the rule.
I mean lets consider, "At the Gala." Most of the ponies at that event clearly go to the Gala regularly, its not a one off thing for them, their dreams won't be coming true, its just a night of nobles plotting and planning and showing off wealth. And those that aren't nobles are almost certainly very busy making sure the event is actually running and function.
But they all get swept up in the song. We don't see a single background pony not take part. And no one stops or raises an eyebrow after Applejack's bit where she essentially says she is going to nickle and dime them.
In addition we see characters who almost certainly never get involved in such a thing get swept up in them. In "Pinkie the Party Planner," Diamond Tiara compliments Pinkie Pie....its almost backhanded as Pinkie points out, BUT the fact remains that Diamond, if she DIDN'T have to say anything, would likely have said nothing at all about Pinkie's planning skills. She isn't one to praise anyone.
Then we have "Morning in Ponyville," Not only do we see latter in the episode that due to Fluttershy being the party pony, the town is not the joyful place it once was, but we have Rarity not mess up the weather or otherwise effect the song until the very end, despite the fact she has little to no control over the weather.
So somehow a town full of angry ponies are all gleeful and pulling off amazing dance choreography, Rarity manages to obscure her failures, and everything goes perfectly until its dramatically appropriate, yet its completely voluntary?
However you could make the claim that, that "A True, True Friend," over emphasis Pinkie Pies role in keeping Ponyville happy and while slightly annoyed about the weather, the ponies of Ponyville are reasonably OK still. In that case, we once again have them being swept up in a heartsong uncontrollably when it MAKES them angry for the song.
I am also sure their is a song that features a large crowd of ponies marching behind Twilight in Ponyville, likely the whole towns worth. I thought it was in "The Crystal Empire" but thats clearly not the case. Sadly I lack the time to find it. Regardless, you can't tell me ALL those ponies just decided to get swept up in the song, that none of them had anything better to do.
Its worth remembering that small farming communities, as much as people try to claim they aren't busy, at least in the Middle Ages, really REALLY were.
Then their are the darker songs. "This Day Aria, Part 1," No one can tell me that our Changeling Queen would blurt out her plan like that if it was voluntary. Worse still is "Pinkie's Lament," which shows a doctor trusting her to be a Nurse....and construction workers that had to build a building entirely wrong just so Pinkie could make a supporting wall out of balloons.
As Ocelloid put it....yes, its the magical, musical equivalent to stress vomit. It will grab people and literally change their actions and abilities, (for example singing and dancing talent) sometimes to the point of being downright unsafe and dangerous. So with that in mind, them not talking about it makes perfect sense.
Talk about what happened to family, close friends and your therapist MAYBE, but not just anyone.
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Some musical numbers are just for the audience and not actually happening. I forgot what it’s called.But there’s a term for it.e
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Remember when Pinkie started a song, but Starlight shoved her hoof in her mouth to shut her up.
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Non-diegetic.
One example of an apparently diegetic song was in "All Bottled Up." Really strange example, as not only did it slow the ponies' escape time for no other reason, but it also seemed to be in sync with the dust-up in Ponyville.
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Almost all MLP songs are this (Sweetie Belle and Pinkie Pie are exceptions to this rule in many cases.) The term Heartsong (AS FAR AS I AM AWARE) is a fan made term to give a cannon explanation for the spontaneous songs that happen but are never acknowledged by the ponies once they end (with the single exception of that time Scootaloo interrupted Applebloom). Thats why some stories go "Heartsongs are a thing a result of magic" and other stories go, "What, singing? What are you talking about?"
8933898
As pointed out above, Pinkie is an exception, just like Sweetie Belle is. As we saw when she sung, "You have to Share, you have to care," Pinkie will sing for the fun of it, without magical empowerment. She is also acknowledged in that same episode to be a terrible song-writer when she isn't doing a Heartsong.
Given that, I think Starlight is just stopping Pinkie from being Pinkie, not preforming a Heartsong.
The songs I just listened to make me cringe and want to sing along at the same time.
Its a wierd feeling.
But I gotta say, nice voice.