The Wonderbirds... are... UP!

by Lets Do This

Space Training

Rainbow had to admit, Spitfire was true to her word.

It wasn't easy.

First there was the early rise every morning, and the daily calisthenics, which had them worn out and sweating before the day had even started. And only then did they move on the actual qualification tests. These ranged from simple tests of skill and coordination, all the way up to all-out physical endurance challenges.

One of the first of these was the Dizzitron, as a test of the candidates' resistance to disorientation and nausea. Spitfire had the contraption's launch lever carefully roped off in order to avoid accidents, but otherwise pushed the wheel's rotational speed up as far as each pony could take it.

Not surprisingly, Pinkie Pie was easily the most resilient. Whirling around with her forehooves in the air, giggling like mad, she continually begged for the speed to be increased, even when it was already pushed to maximum. And Spike, too, was a rock. His low center of gravity meant he didn't experience much disorientation, even when the device was cranked up to higher speeds. Yet even so, Spike was a little wobbly on his feet when they finally unclipped him.

To Rainbow's annoyance, she found that even with her previous experience with the Dizzitron, she wasn't nearly as resilient over longer periods as she'd thought... possibly because previous to this she'd only had to endure the spinning until the launch lever was pulled.

But at least she didn't come in dead last. Spitfire kept Rarity whirling around until her piercing screams shifted from mere shock to fear, and then to abject, bawling terror. Only then did she call a halt. Spike helped Rarity get down from the device and stagger over to a tree, where she sat in its shade and rested quietly, until her eyes stopped whirling.

After the Dizzitron, Spitfire moved them to a centrifuge that the Wonderbolts had built specially. It was basically a chair on a long pole that could be whipped around in a circle at high speed. And again, Pinkie was easily the champion. She could blithely take G-forces that would have crushed a unicorn or pegasi flat. And Spike, with his rugged dragon build, easily matched her.

Rainbow and Rarity were, surprisingly, nearly tied on this one -- possibly because the Dizzitron experience had made the fashion pony determined to try to tough this one out. Rainbow was surprised at her own weak showing, and reasoned it was because she simply hadn't pushed herself before. Her flying routines were normally based on maintaining control in difficult maneuvers, rather than simply pulling excessive G's.

Next was the hyperbaric pressure check, where each pony was put in a steel container in which air could be pumped in, or pumped out. Pinkie handled this easily: she simply swelled up like a balloon or shriveled inward like a prune, taking as much pressure change as they dared inflict in her. And Spike just sat there blithely, apparently unaffected aside from reporting that it made his eardrums pop.

Rarity came out slightly ahead of Rainbow on this one, finding the experience unpleasant but bearable. But Rainbow found that too much pressure made her feel uncomfortably constrained, and too little gave her a splitting headache.

Then they started the zero-G training, which came in two parts. First, they suited up in full diving gear, with helmet and air supply, and were lowered into a pool of water, to test their ability to operate with the encumbrance of the suit and helmet and the sluggish resistance of the water. Here all four crewmembers were fairly matched, since it was mostly a test of endurance, tolerance, and above all patience with the difficult working conditions.

The other part was skydiving. Spitfire had each candidate repeatedly taken up in a balloon to stratospheric heights, and then dropped overboard, with two chase Wonderbolts shadowing them on the way down. There were two further safeties below in case of emergencies, as well as Rainbow herself, fretfully waiting close to the ground as a last-ditch backup.

Being a pegasus, Rainbow had no fear of heights, and handled the plunge herself with ease. She even worked in a few of her favorite aerial routines once the drop portion had been completed. Pinkie enjoyed the drops immensely, repeatedly begging to be allowed yet another do-over, and having to be refused on the grounds that she streamlined herself so well on the way down the chase ponies had difficulty keeping up with her. Spike basically dropped like a stone, eyes shut and teeth clenched all the way down, but was determined to go again as often as they let him. And strangely enough, even Rarity seemed to have little difficulty with the repeated drops, once she'd nerved herself to let go of the balloon's railing... though only as long as "that gallant Mister Soarin'" was kind enough to catch her at the end.

And finally, there were the surprises Spitfire had promised... like being woken up in the middle of the night for a timed test of finding six buttons that had been hidden somewhere in the crew's bunkroom while they slept. Or having the hyperbaric chamber suddenly start filling with water, until they located a switch that would shut it off. Or having to complete a jigsaw puzzle... in teams of two, dangling upside down over a cliff edge with one hoof tied behind each trainee's back. "And if ya lose a piece," Spitfire warned, "don't come cryin' to me to fetch it for ya!"

Rainbow had always thought Spitfire a bit of a sadist at heart, but she was quickly coming to realize the Captain was something far, far worse: a sadist with carte blanche, who always had a perfectly good reason for whatever torment she was inflicting on them.

While the crew were all busy with training, Twilight and Starlight had been hard at work crunching numbers and crafting the physics and engineering that would serve as a basis for the multi-stage rocket they would use. The rocket itself was currently under construction too, by rather bemused construction ponies, at a launch pad set in a clearing out beyond the orchards of Sweet Apple Acres. And launch operations were being monitored from a control room set up in an audience chamber in Twilight's Friendship Castle, the windows of which looked out in the general direction of the launch pad.

The construction ponies were also busy at work on the spacecraft proper which would ride atop the rocket. Rainbow had immediately exercised commander's prerogative and dubbed the craft the Pegasus, even though it actually consisted of two parts: the Command Module, which would be used for the flight to and from the Moon, and the Lunar Excursion Module, which would take a two-pony crew down to the surface.

After a number of discussions -- or heated arguments depending on who you talked to -- Twilight and Rainbow had worked out a straightforward control layout for the two parts of the craft. And that meant that a mock-up of the controls could be built for the pony/dragon/gator crew's training work, while they waited for the actual ship to be made ready.

And here Rainbow finally began to feel a bit of an advantage. With her flyer's capacity for grasping the physical rationale behind each control, from thrust to guidance to environmental management, she could easily compartmentalize the panel, whittling it down to the one or two buttons or levers she needed to deal with at any given time.

Spike, as Twilight's assistant, likewise could handle any amount of detail, by simply categorizing things and remembering what category came next. He and Rainbow made a game of it, testing each other as they ran through the checklists Twilight had provided for the launch, navigation, docking maneuvers, and the final landing and takeoff on the Lunar surface.

Pinkie Pie by contrast found the control panels both baffling and very distracting. She kept wanting to flick whatever levers made lights go on and off, and had serious difficulty simply waiting for the right moment to operate the next control on the checklist. "It's just as good to do it now, right?" she would ask, plaintively. "Just so I don't forget later?"

Thus, she and Rarity focused more on the experiments that Twilight had arranged for them to run. And here Pinkie Pie was on much more solid ground... once she started thinking of them as cake recipes. "A drop of this, a twist of that, let it simmer for two minutes, then squeeze it onto this test strip... ha! Green! Wonder what that means? Oh, well, what's next?"

And throughout this process, the Sun and Moon were raised and lowered, the Day came and went, the Night fell and the Stars twinkled, just as they had for thousands of years. Just astral phenomena... just lights in the sky.

Rainbow watched her bizarre crew come together, finding their strengths and weaknesses, and readying themselves for a mission that would change all that...

... and hoping, beyond hope, that they were all up to it.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Pimkie laughing at every physical distortion thrown her way?

I bet Spitfire was expecting Spike at most to be That Darn Lizert.

Pinkie, not just experiemnts, but the flight plan, is a cake recipie. Leading to the biggest Moon Pie ever.

[Tranquil Serenity]

Chapter 1
Hmm. I never even considered the possibility that ponies wouldn't have traveled to the moon, but here it really seems to make sense.

Is Wonderbirds a reference to the old Thunderbirds franchise?