Venkat stumbled into Teddy’s office. For once he was the last to arrive. Teddy was standing, not sitting, behind his desk. Annie paced with barely restrained fury from one side of the large room to the other. Mitch, rumpled and worried-looking, had abandoned the couch in favor of Venkat’s preferred wall-propping position. “I was giving Mark his orders for the day,” he said. “What’s the emergency?”
“Congress,” Teddy said, in a tone that suggested he’d be spitting the word if Teddy Sanders were a man that spat anything. “The House Subcommittee on Space Exploration just ordered a special commission to investigate SpaceX operations in light of the launch failures of Sleipnir 1 and 3. Apparently the chairman isn’t satisfied with how SpaceX is handling its internal investigation. And they’ve ordered SpaceX to halt all operations until the committee is chosen and seated.”
“What??” Venkat gasped. “They can’t do this! We need boosters for Sleipnir 4 and for the Sleipnir 3 refueling! It’ll be months before anyone else can deliver a booster with the power we need!”
“I know,” Teddy said. “I’ve got a plane waiting on the tarmac at Ellington Field. I need to make the case before the committee members in person that we need those boosters to ensure the continued well-being of our people on Mars.”
“The ranking minority member’s a real choad,” Annie put in. “I think he got himself on the committee just so he could attack NASA. He thinks we’re wasting money that could be put to useful things like battleships and tanks and observation balloons.”
“And not everybody on the majority is on our side,” Teddy added. “But popular opinion is still heavily on Watney’s side, and especially on the ponies’ side. I’m going to use that to pry at least two more SpaceX rockets out of the committee’s grip.”
Mitch cleared his throat. “How long is that going to take?” he asked, in nothing like his usual I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-your-feelings tone.
Teddy shrugged. “As long as it takes,” he said. “We need those boosters, and we need them in less than three months to do any good.”
“What was their projected delivery date?” Mitch asked, a little more forcefully.
Venkat supplied the answer on Teddy’s behalf. “Three weeks for a simple Sleipnir 3 refueling mission, assuming no more foul-ups. Seventy-two days for a brand-new Red Falcon ready for Sleipnir 4.”
“That’s cutting it tight,” Mitch said. “Really tight. Teddy, don’t you think you should reconsider-“
“Project Elrond is dead,” Teddy said firmly. “That decision has been made. We’re committed to Sleipnir 4 and Ares 3B, Mitch. Now we have to go out and make it happen.”
The director of NASA picked up his briefcase. “Everyone, we’re going forward as if nothing happened this morning. I hope that it will un-happen not later than tomorrow afternoon. Venk, get with Bruce. JPL used up almost all the available spare parts for Mars supply missions building the first three Sleipnirs. Now he’s building Sleipnir 4 from scratch, and our suppliers are dragging their heels. Do what you can to energize them.”
Venkat nodded. “I’ll do all I can,” he said.
“Annie, do everything you can to salvage SpaceX’s reputation,” Teddy continued. “We need pressure off them and on Congress. Don’t be afraid to appeal to the sympathy of the voters.”
“Like I don’t do that every fucking day?” she growled.
“Mitch, keep working over the data logs from Sleipnir 1,” Teddy finished. “And get your teams ready for Sleipnir 4. Make sure the pad crews at KSC are ready to roll the instant we get booster and probe delivered.”
“Will do,” Mitch replied, still quiet, but with a different tone in his voice.
“Sorry to cut this short,” Teddy said, “but I’m late.” And without further comment, he strode out the door, leaving the other directors behind him.
Annie lingered only a moment longer than Teddy. “I’ve got to get some releases written ASAP,” she said. “Christ, this is going to take some fucking finesse.” And she was gone, leaving Venkat and Mitch standing looking at each other.
Mitch spoke first. “What are the odds on Sleipnir 4, really?” he asked.
Venkat shook his head. “The bottleneck is in the tumbler landing systems,” he said. “The air bags for the tumblers are made out of hab canvas, and the contractors already gave JPL all their backstock for the first three Sleipnir probes. The manufacture requires chemical processes that can’t be accelerated. They just finished cutting the pieces for the Ares IV Hab, so they’re starting from zero. It’ll be a month before JPL gets the raw fabric for Sleipnir 4’s air bags and parachutes, and JPL will have to assemble them themselves. That on top of machining the hull, assembling the electronics, building the thrusters and everything else. It’s going to be tight, Mitch. It’s going to be damn tight.”
Mitch nodded. “About what I was thinking,” he said. “Well, we’ll be ready.”
“I know you will, Mitch,” Venkat said. “Just try not to break too many knuckles, okay?”
Mitch rubbed his own knuckles absently. “You mean like Teddy just now?”
“We need to keep focused on task,” Venkat said. “And our task right now is Sleipnir 4, followed by Ares 3B. Which reminds me, I have to talk with Lockheed about how construction of the next MAV is going.”
“I’ll talk with the SpaceX engineers,” Mitch said. “I’ll try to be gentle, though.”
“You know,” Moondancer said over her stack of books, “there are reasons why we generally don’t build houses or buildings with magic. Wood and bricks and iron take much less work.”
“Not helping,” Lemon Hearts said. “Anyway, we don’t need Starlight to build a house. We only need her to make about an inch-thick layer of solid, continuous, flawless quartz crystal over a surface about fifty-eight thousand square meters in size.”
Twilight Sparkle’s old gang from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, along with Sunburst, had gathered in the largest research room at Cape Friendship. Every once in a while Spike would belch and let loose a green flame that would coalesce into yet another book found in the Canterlot royal archives by Celestia herself, by request of Moondancer, Sunburst, or Twilight herself as they thought of them.
“Only fifty-eight thousand meters,” Minuette giggled. “So simple!”
Lyra turned a page in her own book. “We’re talking about an alicorn-level spell, Twilight,” she said. “Would such a thing even be written down?”
“We have to do it,” Twilight replied. “If Mark’s people are right, that cave farm of theirs could fail at any moment. Without that they don’t eat and they can’t recharge the magic batteries they’re rebuilding. So I refuse to believe there is no solution!” She slammed her own book shut, having found nothing of promise inside. “As for power and skill, Starlight’s the most powerful unicorn in all Equestria. She was able to fight me to a draw, remember.”
“Still not helping, girls,” Lemon Hearts repeated. “Let’s focus on the task. The whole cave is lined with silicon dioxide, right? Just not in pure crystal form.”
“It’s practically lined in quartz crystals,” Twilight said. “But not a single crystal, and the cave walls behind it are porous, just like a geode.”
“Okay, so how do we get rid of the pores?” Lemon Hearts repeated. “She used Door What Door to seal the cave initially, right?”
“That’s right,” Twilight said. “But that spell is almost impossible to cast without line of sight, and you can’t recast it without un-casting it first. She can’t use it again without risking a breach.”
“Okay, so what makes quartz airtight, then?” Lemon Hearts asked.
“Heat and pressure deep under the earth’s crust,” Moondancer said, not looking up from her book.
“That’s no good,” Sunburst said, his beard wagging as he shook his head. “That much heat would make the permafrost above the cave explode, wouldn’t it?”
“What about petroculture spells?” Lyra asked. “Wouldn’t the Pies know something about that?”
“The Pie family doesn’t use unicorn spells,” Twilight said. “They pride themselves on marketing only one hundred percent naturally grown rocks.”
“Well, somebody must have used magic to make crystals grow!” Lyra said. “What about the Tree of Harmony? Your castle? There’s got to be somepony who knows how that works!”
“I never questioned it before,” Twilight said. “Well, I did question it at first, but there was always something else to do, and I always believed the Tree of Harmony knew what it was doing, so I never studied it properly.”
“Wow,” Minuette muttered. “All of this trouble just to get rid of a few holes in the rock.”
Pages continued to rustle, but one fewer page rustled than had done before Minuette spoke.
Spike burped, caught the book as it materialized, and said, a little tiredly, “Good Neighbor’s Advanced Wall Mending Spells. Who asked for this one?”
“That was Twilight, I think,” Sunburst said, his own head buried in Flois du Rose’s Dark Side of the Wall.
Twilight didn’t speak.
“Twilight? If you’re done, can you stop sending requests long enough for me to get some water?” Spike asked. He burped a normal burp and added, “And some antacid?”
“Get rid of the holes,” Twilight said. “Minuette, you’re a genius!”
“Of course,” Minuette said modestly. “You can’t be a social secretary to the Canterlot elite without-“
“We don’t need to transmute anything!” Twilight said, warming to her task. “And we don’t need to make the crystals grow or melt! We’re looking at it the wrong way! We need a spell that mends holes- that makes holes go away! That’s all! That’s easy!”
“A spell to get rid of holes?” Moondancer stopped and thought about it. “Cheesemonger’s Mouse-be-Gone?”
“Cedar Chest’s Moth Mender?” Lemon Hearts suggested.
“Midnight Blue’s Shameful Stocking Stitch?” Sunburst added.
Several glares reminded him that, Spike excepted, he was the only stallion in the room. “Where,” Lyra asked on behalf of the majority, “did you pick up a spell like that?”
“And does Starlight know yet?” Minuette added, waggling her eyebrows.
“No, no, simpler!” Twilight shouted. In a flash of magic the books exploded off the table, stacking themselves neatly in a corner in three columns reaching almost to the ceiling. “Clover’s Instant Foundations! Clover the Clever used ordinary soil to form foundations for Canterlot’s oldest buildings by taking away the space between the bits of dirt and rock! It made them stronger than concrete! It’s part of why Canterlot doesn’t break off and slide down the side of Mount Canter!” She pulled out inkwell and parchment with her magic and frantically scribbled notes with a quill. “And I’m pretty sure Starlight already knows the spell!”
In the silence that followed as the other unicorns watched Twilight designing a new hybrid spell on the fly, Spike asked, “So, are you done with all those books, or what?”
8858711 Or, as the probes demonstrate, blind jumps to other worlds, even nearby ones, are BLOODY DANGEROUS, to the point that exploration of the multiverse is actively discouraged.
It's kind of assumed that the nearest universes to our own are the ones most like our own. It's not supported by any evidence or theory that I can think of, and makes as much logical sense as saying that the planets closest to our own in the galaxy are the most Earthlike. Hence the wide variety of results from the Angel probes.
cant tell if this is casual sexism or not
8858922
Exactly. Plus I am fairly sure that everyone should know that those Sleipnir rockets were a slight rush job.
Ah, Clover the Clever. Nice to see him becoming relevant. I wish we could get more of his story.
Send a Copy of the spell anyways, just to be safe.
I'm assuming by the way Instant Foundations is described that it doesn't have a upkeep drain on mana, because it doesn't seem like the dirt's being compressed, but that it's a one-time removal of the air.
I'm also assuming, because Mars Is Difficult To Live On, that something's going to go wrong with the casting, or that the mana cost to Instant Foundations the cave is too great to actually do, or (really unlikely worst-case) the spell thinks that the cave is a hole in the stone and fills it.
Clearly there is only one pony for the job...
Sombra.
Oh hi contrived conflict. I didn't think you'd show. And you brought the government? How nice.
Also, they need to learn about solid-crystal construction? Kinda makes me wish there were ponies who regularly worked with Crystal, or lived in Crystal buildings, in some some sort of Crystal city. Like some kind of...Crystal Empire. Do you have one of those?
No? Darn.
And they always look for an excuse to throw a wrench into the gears...
Cough "SLS, Deep space gateway, Lunar Gateway), Cough, Cough
um.... Wasn't there that one unicorn... grey coat... black mane... curved red horn... name started with an "S"?
Surprised no one mentioned him.
Wouldn't removing the space within the soil cause the whole thing to shrink? That sounds like the sort of thing that you don't want to have happen to a roof.
I can already hear the 'Let them die" camp's argument that leaving Watney and the ponies to die is "financially cheaper".
I didn't get the joke, but I laughed anyway. Is it a pony lingerie joke?
Beureucracy. Slow to get going which is why theyve managed to launch so far, but slow to divert and stop when it finally catches up with three generations ago.
Looks like Rolls Royce and Boeing have got intrest in SABRE now. Putting a few million apiece in so they can claim rights to engines each of which is worth more than their investment.
And theres two on each craft.
Its like the UK goverment decided, when Prospero was on the launchpad and fueled and ready, that there was no money to be had in Space, so they canceled the whole UK Goverment space industry. Depending on which articles you read, the satelite was launched anyway, because the crew was in Australia and they were all unemployed anyway.
Prospero is still up there in orbit.
Some fat southerner dude on the Mark Zuckerberg hearing.
The cave can’t blow out down or sideways. Only up. Why not weigh down the overburden? Or magically treat the regolith above the cave?
8859011
I think it's for condoms. Ya know, make sure they aren't leaky.
8858981
Crystal ponies
Made of crystal
Eat crystal
Live and work in crystal buildings
Walk crystal streets
In a crystal city
Protected by the Crystal Heart
And when they die they're put into crystal coffins
And buried with their ancestors in crystal caverns
Now just s/crystal/flesh/.
Crystal ponies are metal as f
8858922
You're thinking of Diabolus Ex Machina ( ! WARNING: TVTROPES LINK ! )
8858978
Holy moly.
And if the comics are even the least bit canon in this universe? He's available to help.
I know Mitch is thinking of the Purnell maneuver, but didn't that just become impossible? Didn't it need a Slepnir probe to be fueled up and ready to launch to intercept it or everyone starves? So that option is off the table if they can't make those launches happen.
The foundation spell sounds like it could collapse the cave, or shrink the rough to the point it cracks. I think a mending spell is likely better at this point, and it probably can be done in stages.
8858922
if Congress had their way, not a single penny would be spent on anything to run the government, just funneled directly into their own pockets.
You know, there's a good reason a group of baboons is called a Congress...
I adore Minuette, but she and Moondancer appearing in scenes together in print always throws me, as I read the names too quickly and confuse who's speaking.
Congress throwing up barriers was a good way to switch up the status quo regarding whether the Purnell manoeuvre is the best option or not. I do hope the ponies manage to fix the cave. Seems Twilight did quite well in this chapter!
8858978
Dont you mean sombrero?
So... where is Cadance in all of this? Because I'm pretty sure that one of the crystal ponies would know a thing or two about, oh, I don't know, working with crystals? And seeing as the crystal ponies currently live in Cadance's domain... just saying.
BTW, fuck Congress. Impeding progress since its very conception, Congress has been
We are talking about Starlight Bucking Glimmer here! Buck yeah!
But seriously, after 5 years (if I remember correctly it's 5 years after current show events) there should exist far better testament to her skill. Better examples are already present it the show itself. And it not like being good at fighting would help her much there.
Organic rock farming!
Looks like this legend is really widely known among unicorns. If the spell is so simple, effective and famous it should have been among first things they (and Starlight too) remembered in relation to keyword "construction".
8859058
Very true, on the other hand it opens the door for China to jump in to use there booster for Sleipnir 4.
8858922
To be fair you're asking for millions of dollars to feed a man for a couple months. A man who "knew the risks and signed up for it." Of course the government is going to be right dicks.
Think about how much money is being spent on just 1 man. Money that could go to the vets or into social services, infrastructure... all those things politicians use as excuses to spend money on but never actually do. The ponies make it harder because no politician wants it on record that they voted against saving the lives of the first aliens encountered.
I'm amazed it took this long for them to find a way to try and shut it all down.
8859058
Actually fromnthe sounds of it it just seals the gaps by somehow fusing dirt into something stronger than concrete so if that spell is allowed to work its magic(pun DEFINITELY intended) then that cave would essentially become an ultra strong bunker capable of withstanding a lot of environmental change or even a dozen sticks of dynamite exploding on top of it
8858922
8859011
I'm going to get a whole lot of hate for this comment. But I can kiiinda see Congress' point if this was ever addressed in the original book. They spent, what, how many tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars speed-building vessels and throwing the force of an entire government behind saving this one guy?
Sure it makes for a romantic, no-man-left-behind, every-life-is-priceless sorta schtick. But I honestly spent the middle half of the movie idly imagining how many tens or hundreds of thousands of children they could've supplied food, water, education and shelter with that sort of trade off. Which took me so far out of immersion that it almost ruined the movie for me.
I help do work with people who dig up and supply water wells in shitty countries, so I actually lingered on the funding part a bit longer than I suspect most people would. So when I watched NASA piss away funding for multiple launches and get massive international cooperation and funding all for one man in the movies I felt it was a little.... Eerie I suppose? Like because he was an astronaut that his life was intrinsically worth more than thousands of littler, less significant nameless people to the government? His story's compelling, and it's culturally entertaining. And indubitably anyone in-universe who asked whether or not the money could've been spent more efficiently otherwise would probably be shouted down as a sociopath. But my first gut reaction to the insane lengths they were willing to go through for one person was more or less.... Just ditch him dangit. Why don't you guys give even 1/1000ths that much of a shit about the most downtrodden in our modern society or, really, any other? What makes this guy so special? You'll get any number of superior sob stories literally everywhere in the places everyone tries their best to ignore and pretend don't exist, and it's easier to alleviate their burdens and save their lives by multiple orders of magnitudes without pulling what has to be retarded amounts of funding out of other probably more useful projects for something that might not even realistically work.
So bean counting Congress dudes? If you're not the stereotypical bog-standard corrupt faceless, soulless, evil government bureaucrat that everyone loves to hate? If you looked down on the insane amount of funding that the turbo nerds requested to save one single man as opposed to an entire city's infrastructure you could help revitalize on the other hand and incredulously exclaimed "what the fuck is this noise?". I feel you. Keep on being you.
8859148
I always say that Celestia should improve her school recruitment methods. How do you let somepony as powerful and as skilled in magic as Starlight, slip through the cracks?
Then I saw her father and realized why she never got to go. Damn over protective parenting...
8859200
what episode was that in?
8859209
It was one of the leaked episodes.
I couldn't resist because it was a Starlight episode. Her father is really clingy and Overprotective. Wouldn't let her interact with other ponies and make friends because they were strangers. As over protective as that, it would be no wonder he never sent her to Celestia's school. And grew up isolated......
8859216
I figured as much, do you know the name of it per chance?
8859219
The Parent Map
Name is obviously based off the title of the movie The Parent Trap.
Starlight didn't get to learn how to properly interact with and make friends. That's one of the fundemental things you should be learning while growing up. You learn by doing, which Starlight didn't get a chance to.
Her dad meant well, but he really screwed up here.
Maybe he saw what Sunburst leaving did to her, and didn't want to see it happen to his little girl again? If she doesn't make any friends, she can't lose them again. Good intentions, but you know what they say about those.
I also noticed that the Mother was very noticeably absent..... Death maybe?
And Starlight had a goth stage! We need fan works of that.
8859187
We humans are very good at caring about a person. We're a lot less good at caring about people.
8859180
Thing is, the goodwill engendered by saving the ponies will likely more than pay off in economic benefits once permanent contact is established. It'd be shortsighted of Congress not to see that. Going "oh, we decided not to fund the rescue missions to the best of our ability" won't exactly go well for relations with a culture that truly believes friendship is magic.
8859228
Yeah. But it's kind of Congress' job to make sure that one person's life is presumably weighted properly on a scale compared to the hundreds of thousands others that they're responsible for. So one person presumably doesn't get insane preferential treatment... Like this guy. People was pissed at a billionaire like Steve Jobs cutting in line at the organ donors in Tennessee and getting, like, ten livers lined up at the drop of a hat because of how influential and rich he was. Catering to Mark Whatney is like a thousand times more inefficient than that. The only difference is that Steve Jobs is a gigantic gaping unlikeable asshole, and Mark Whatney kind of isn't. But to me they're both still getting the 1%, their-lives-are-the-only-ones-that-matter-fuck-everyone-else treatment.
I'm not sure I can believe this.
I mean, in the Martian it was one thing, but this fic seems to have kept things bizarrely consistent on that front despite the whole alien first contact thing.
This is something that totally redefines humanity and our place in the universe, and other than the media getting excited there's almost no sign of a reaction in this fic. Hell, they have an actual functioning ftl drive (or the technology to create one) without even getting into the broader implications of trading with aliens who have progressed down an entirely different technological path.
We're talking a paradigm shift in the entire economy, enough to dwarf the effects of any other technological development, and yet there's no additional funding and pressure to get them back to Earth?
I'm just struggling to believe that, with alien life confirmed and friendly and ready to be contacted, a few politicians in one country would have any ability to pull something that would significantly impact the alien's chances of rescue. The entire world would be crying for their heads. More importantly, the entire world's businesses and governments would be very unhappy about it.
I don't think the Congressional intervention is fundamentally unreasonable. Sure, there's certainly going to be an asshole minority saying, "Just pull the plug on Watney, and space exploration as a whole!".
But I think the majority opinion from Congress is realistically going to be: "Look, we pretty much handed you a blank check for rescue operations, and the results you've produced are that two out of three launches failed. We can't afford further failure, so we're taking a good hard look at things before we let you use up the last bit of time and resources we have left."
8858957
Normal, garden-variety dirt is a bucket full of random Lego bricks, all jumbled and granular.
Dirt after the spell is a perfectly filled Tetris grid.
8859236
Did I say it was the right thing? Politicians are super short sighted and you know the excuse that will be used if anyone calls them out on this.
"Our primary concern is ensuring the ability of these missions making it to Mars safely..." blah, blah, blah, ect.
The fact that these rushes are needed doesn't factor in because what good are the launches if they fail? Hell, if Mike wasn't so pressured he probably WOULD have sent that launch back, costing extra time but ensuring it launching safely. While #2 made it to orbit safely 0/3 launches happened without issues, that's an unacceptable failure rate. The attempts were made with good reason... but 2 extra weeks would have not only increased the chances of success but in this case probably would have still gotten there faster.
I'd have still rushed them but I don't care about cost in this case.
i'll say thgis agian, if mitch does what he really should do, this is more likely to bute teddy in the ass then mitch. he's making calls he lacks authority to make.
8859388
It's not the first time.
She was the one in Fame and Misfortune that said. 'Look, it's Pinkie Pie. The funny one!'
8859374
These are beings that can grow gems! If they want money so bad, they should be rescuing them.
They have so many gems, they practically use them as one of their currency.