//------------------------------//
// Chapter 16: ESA Flight 13: Die Hard Explorers 
// Story: Changeling Space Program 
// by Kris Overstreet 
//------------------------------//

The meeting ought to have taken place in one of the offices at Cape Friendship. They'd gathered to discuss the space race, after all, and such a discussion belonged at a space center. And little things like whiteboards, ship models, and computers helped when making decisions about space launches, no doubt about that.

But getting everypony currently actively engaged in running the Equestria Space Agency in one place had been next to impossible for the past month, to the point that this meeting, this vital meeting about the future of ESA and its single most important mission, this meeting was being held over pancake breakfast in Twilight Sparkle's castle in Ponyville. 

Applejack sat in her little crystal throne and sighed. Midsummer had come, and with it the first harvests. Two months from now would be cider season, two weeks during which she'd be absolutely nailed to Sweet Apple Acres(434). And on top of that there was Twilight's new School of Friendship, the foundations of which had just been laid two weeks before. With all the construction required, it'd take a year before the first students entered the doors... and Applejack was helping Twilight oversee the contractors and review blueprints practically every other day.

Nor was Applejack the only one with a full schedule. Rainbow Dash had Wonderbolts training and shows on a thrice-weekly basis.(435) Rarity had three boutiques to oversee and make fashions for on top of her space-suit sideline. Pinkie Pie... was Pinkie Pie. And Twilight Sparkle, in addition to overseeing the entire Equestrian Space Agency, was trying to get a new school off the ground while dealing with princess fan mail, missions given by the Cutie Map, and the occasional monster attack(436).

But now, finally, two days after the latest press conference from the Changeling Space Program, they'd managed to get together- the six of them (counting Fluttershy) plus Twilight's student Starlight Glimmer, Cape Friendship chief technomancer Moondancer, and a group of unicorns acting as advisors(437). Spike, ever the dutiful assistant, worked a slide projector as Twilight began the less syrup-focused part of the breakfast-slash-meeting.

"Changeling Space Program is three launches away from a moon landing," Twilight began, as Spike brought up a projection of a rough design diagram taken from the CSP press conference. "They've developed a three-mare capsule and a new generation of liquid-fuel engines capable of lifting much heavier loads than ever before. The first test launch of that system comes in thirteen days, when they launch a wheeled robot lander to Minmus to complete the science contract Cherry Berry wasn't able to finish on her flight."

"Yeah, we know all that, Twilight," Rainbow Dash interrupted. "It was in yesterday's paper, for crying out loud! The question is, what do we do about it?"

"Dash!" Twilight shouted back, offended. "I'm just getting this meeting started with the proper context for anypony who might have forgotten!"

"Yeah!" Pinkie Pie put in. "Besides, what if there were mysterious invisible people watching us who don't know what's going on because they weren't looking at us when we were reading the paper or attending the news conference because those parts weren't interesting? Don't you think the invisible people deserve to know what's going on?"

"Oh my," Fluttershy murmured. "Do you really think there are strange invisible ponies watching us right now?" She sank into her throne until her swish of pink mane barely rose above the armrests.

"Of course there aren't," Rainbow Dash insisted. "It's just Pinkie being Pinkie."

"If I may continue?" Twilight asked. "I've already got the slide show set up anyway. It'll just make things confused if I skip ahead."

Dash blew out a snort. "Fiiiiine," she whined.

Pinkie Pie turned her head towards the door, facing absolutely nopony, and said, "You're welcome!"

"We have one small advantage," Twilight Sparkle said, motioning to Spike for the next slide. A photo of Cherry Berry in a hospital bed filled the screen. "CSP's medical staff is keeping Cherry under observation. Eighteen days of weightlessness and confinement to a one-pony capsule left her in pretty bad shape, and it's going to take her time to recover. And CSP won't send up an untested crewed ship without her at the controls."

"Good for us," Applejack put in, "but not so good for Cherry. I sent her a get-well-soon card. I think everypony else oughta do th' same."

"I personally delivered a lovely floral arrangement," Rarity added. "She said it was delicious."

"Was it as good as my cherry-glaze cupcakes I brought her?" Pinkie Pie added.

"I'm sure," Twilight said sternly, "that we all made sure to wish her a speedy recovery already. Now if I may- what is it, Dash?"

Rainbow Dash cringed in her seat. "Nothing," she said weakly. "Just remind me I gotta stop by the post office after we get done here."

"Anyway- next slide, Spike- after they launch the probe to Minmus," Twilight Sparkle continued, "the next launch will be a shakedown of the three-mare capsule, with Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Leonid orbiting the moon but not touching down. If that mission succeeds, the next flight will be the landing, with Cherry, Chrysalis and one other crew to be named. Their current projection is for a landing about two weeks before Nightmare Night."

"That's still over two months away," Rainbow Dash said. "We could put together a stock-part lander, just big enough for one pony. Like what Cherry did, except smaller, because we wouldn't need the science stuff. Just a capsule, legs, and a small engine for landing and takeoff. We could do that in a month, easy."

"We're not going to do it that way," Twilight said bluntly. "First, because we're not sending anypony up in an untested lander. Second, because it would be a waste of a wonderful opportunity to collect scientific data from the moon's surface."

"And finally," Moondancer put in, "because none of us can believe what Cherry Berry got away with on Mission Twenty-two. Do you really want to fly a stack like that to the moon- a stack which we aren't sure can get you back from a much heavier world than Minmus?"

"Well, duh!" Rainbow Dash smirked. "I wouldn't make half the mistakes Cherry did on her flight. And she'd be the first to admit as much if she were here."

Twilight shrugged. "Anyway, we're not doing that. We are launching a ship to the moon on stock parts, but nopony's going to be inside it."

"Why not?"

"Because it's going to be a ship that can land on the moon, but can't return home to Equus."

Rainbow Dash's eyes tried to cross. "What? What good is a ship like that?"

"A whole lot of good," Twilight Sparkle said. "Next slide, Spike." With a click, the projection shifted to a squat bug-looking ship that looked like a couple of chestnut cans(438) with legs glued on. "Think of it like a sailing ship's boat going out to a beach. Instead of doing all the work to get a big ship in and out of shallow water, you just take only what you need to for the landing. No heat shield or parachutes, because the moon doesn't have any air. That means you need less fuel going down and coming up, which improves the odds of a successful landing and return."

"Big deal! So you get off the moon and end up stranded in space because you don't have a ship to bring you home!" Rainbow Dash insisted.

"But you will have a ship," Twilight said. "Next slide." The next projection showed a standard-looking rocket stack on one side and the launch configuration of Amicitas on the other. "We launch the landing ship empty, on probe controls. The ponies actually landing go up in Amicitas. Next slide." 

The projection switched to what looked like a complex ring of metal, with little tags pointing out various parts. "We're adding a docking ring on each ship so the two can connect in orbit around the moon, allowing ponies to transfer from one to the other without an EVA. Next slide." The next picture showed the bug-can-thing, upside down, sitting on Amicitas's back. "Somepony stays in Amicitas in case things go wrong, while two ponies go down to the surface and then, if all goes well, come back up. They dock again, the lander gets dumped to crash into the moon, and everypony flies home nice and safe on Amicitas.”

"Huh." Rainbow Dash tapped her chin. "I was wondering how you planned to get Amicitas down and up, heavy as it is, without air. But Amicitas is barely capable of low orbit." She pointed a hoof at Twilight and continued, "You were there with me! Yeah, we had fuel in the tank when we got to orbit, but not nearly enough for a moon shot! How are we gonna get that big a ship all the way out to the moon and back?"

"Starlight?"

Starlight Glimmer stepped forward. "We've been running tests on the third generation mana batteries and fifth generation magic thruster systems," she said. "What we've got is a system that puts out about three and a half tons of thrust per engine."

"Three and a half tons?" Rainbow Dash's eyes tried to cross again. "But Amicitas weighs over fifty tons empty! Even with three engines, that won't get her off the ground!"

"No, it won't," Starlight agreed. "But the thing is, we can install an array of the new magic batteries inside Amicitas- bigger than the one we removed for Flight Eleven. With that array gathering ambient mana, each engine can produce three and a half tons of thrust... indefinitely."

"The ship, once in orbit, would have a top acceleration of about one point five meters per second per second," Moondancer added. "Yes, that's slow. Trans-lunar injection will require a very long, slow burn, or possibly two. But that's all right, because we can do it as long as we want. No fuel restrictions. As much delta-V as we want, provided we're patient."

"The moon lander will have conventional rockets," Twilight added. "Even lightened up, it'll be too heavy for the new engine system. Only chemical rockets provide enough thrust to counter lunar gravity. But we're almost there!"

"Hmmm." Rainbow Dash considered this. "Thing is," she said slowly, "Amicitas is big, heavy, and has a crew maximum of seven, right? But we don't really need more than three ponies, if your lander only holds two. Dibs on being one of those two, by the way."

"Of course," Twilight nodded.

"So what I'm wondering is, why use Amicitas at all?" Rainbow Dash asked. "It'll be a lot easier to send up a smaller, lighter ship, won't it? So we get Appleoosa to sell us one of their three-pony jobs, put your docking port on that, and use it instead!"

Twilight shook her head. "First, I already asked. The changelings aren't selling their second-generation rocket and crew systems yet," she said. "And second... I'm convinced that Amicitas is the future of space flight. Magic engines will one day send ships to Bucephalous and Chiron and all the other planets in our solar system- maybe even to other stars! Chemical rockets are a temporary stop-gap technology- and a dangerous one, too! I don't just want to beat Chrysalis to the moon. I want to prove that our way is the best way to do it!"

"Maybe you oughta think about which is more important," Applejack drawled, "proving your thesis right or keepin' Chrysalis's dirty hooves off the moon." Not that she expected to change Twilight's mind by pointing this out. She'd said as much before, after all, and here they were anyway.

"I think we can do both," Twilight said. "Look, we all know Chrysalis is plotting something, right? And whatever it is depends on her getting to the moon first, or else she wouldn't have gone to all this trouble! But what if it doesn't? What if Chrysalis wins by getting to the moon at all? No, we've got to win the space race in such a way that, whatever she does next, she gives up on the moon entirely. And that means-"

"I'm sorry, Twilight," Rarity said cautiously, "but I think you really ought to think about what does come next. I mean, I agree we should get to the moon first, obviously." The purple-maned unicorn sat forward on her throne and tapped a hoof on the map table. "But when that happens we're going to have a lot of unhappy changelings, out in the open, with nothing to do and no prospects for the future."

"Now, that's jus' not true," Applejack put in. "Cherry's done a crackerjack job o' findin' jobs for changelings. Why, we've even used a few out at th' farm now an' again. They make good hands if ya watch 'em close. An' then there's those new TV shows they're puttin' out. Granny Smith sure does love The Neighbors Upstairs, I tell ya that."

"And we've left space tourism and private satellite launches entirely to them," Twilight Sparkle continued. "If the changelings want to continue space flight, they'll still have plenty of opportunities."

"But wouldn't it be cruel to... well... crush their hopes and dreams?" Fluttershy murmured. "Maybe we have to beat them, but we don't have to... um... beat them... I guess?"

"Maybe we do have to," Rainbow Dash said. "We've gotten to know a few of the changelings over at CSP, right? I know I have. That Occupant, he's kinda stupid, yeah? But Dragonfly isn't nearly as dumb as she makes out to be. And they're both totally loyal to Chrysalis, which would be really cool if Chrysalis weren't totally evil and wicked! And if she says, 'No more Ms. Nice Bug,' the other changelings will fall right in behind her unless we totally shut her down cold!"

"But that's precisely what I'm concerned about, dear!" Rarity replied. "If we do, as you put it, shut her down cold, why wouldn't she return to her old ways? She'd have lost everything-"

Twilight rapped her hoof on the map table and kept pounding it until the discussion stopped. "You've given me a lot to think about, girls," she said once she had every pony's attention again. "But the fact is that, at least for now, the only multi-pony ship we have available is Amicitas. It'd take us months to design and build our own capsule like the one CSP is testing. That's time we don't have, especially since we have to build and test our lander already."

"That's our job," Lemon Hearts chipped in. "And we'll also be training Rainbow Dash and Spitfire how to fly it."

"We have most of the parts already," Moondancer added. "Assembly is already in progress back in Baltimare. We could be ready to launch the first lander in three weeks."

"But first we need to put our own communications relay satellite in orbit around the moon," Twilight Sparkle put in. "Just in case our relay system gets blocked by the moon's shadow. That's going to be Flight Twelve. How soon can that launch?"

"We have a satellite ready to go, and the chemical rocket to do it," Moondancer reported. "We could launch in five days, if we have the mission control crew available."

"I'll be there," Applejack said. She'd been flight controller for every flight so far, and she didn't see a reason to change that now. "Fluttershy, do you think you're up to bein' our SATCOM?"

"I-I-I'll try," Fluttershy said quietly. Then she took a deep breath, sat up in her throne, and said more firmly, "No. I'll do it. I'll be there."

"Okay then," Applejack said. "That's settled. What next? The landing?"

"Not without a test flight," Twilight said. "First, we see if Amicitas can make it to lunar orbit and back. Rainbow Dash and I will be the crew again, with Spitfire and Moondancer as backup. That'll be Flight Thirteen."

"Ooooh! Lucky thirteen!" Pinkie Pie grinned. "Because nothing bad ever happens with thirteen!"

"Flight Fourteen will be an unmanned landing and launch of a probe-core lander," Twilight said, ignoring Pinkie. "And if all goes well, Flight Fifteen will be the real thing."

"And we've got two whole months to make it happen?" Rainbow Dash grinned. "Easy-peasy. Chrysalis won't know what hit her."



Footnotes:

(434) So would Rainbow Dash, but for totally different reasons.

(435) As did Wonderbolts Captain Spitfire, who currently sat #2 on the pilot roster despite having not yet ridden a single rocket anyplace.

(436) The gathered Elements of Harmony were carefully not looking over in one alcove of the throne room, where a young sphinx sat in a pile of parchment carefully writing out I will not bother busy ponies with riddles and/or threats to devour them a thousand times. She'd had to start over once already when Twilight, still grumpy at being interrupted, had made her start over and do it in modern Equestrian instead of hieroglyphics. 

(437) After the recent incident in which Starlight Glimmer had been sent by the Cutie Map to Canterlot to mend a breach between Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, she and the group of CSGU graduates had begun referring to themselves as the Legion of Substitute Twilights. Minuette had had to be talked down from commissioning a set of body suits as uniforms.

(438) About the same proportions as what would be cans of tuna in our world. Canned chestnuts were occasionally a light, crisp, crunchy snack for campers, but more usually an ingredient in stir-fry and salad recipes. Sadly, the canning process made them useless for roasting, which was the favorite pony way to enjoy them.



"... perfect equatorial orbit, one hundred fifty kilometers altitude, orbital deviation three percent," Fluttershy said with a long sigh of relief as she removed her hooves from the probe controls. ESA-12, the fourth Equestrian communications satellite, had just joined the changeling CSP-R2 in orbit around the moon. 

"Confirmed stable orbit," Moondancer called from the trajectory console. "Satellite is generating power, stable, forty-five percent fuel remaining in tank."

"Good," Applejack said, "Go for test signal."

"Okey-doke!" Lemon Hearts said, tapping a few keys on the EECOM console in front of her. Three moments later, she said, "Test signal returns A-OK! No errors!"

"Well, all right," Applejack said, nodding to herself. "I reckon we got us a satellite!"

Up in Cape  Friendship's mission control gallery, Twilight Sparkle shook hooves with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, then with each of the eight reporters who'd stuck around for the orbital insertion and single adjustment burn needed to put the new satellite in its planned orbit.

"So, beans are go(439), right?" Rainbow Dash asked from a seat at the back of the mission control floor, looking expectantly at Applejack.

The orange pony at the flight director station shook her head. "Beans are for launches, Dash," she said. "And they’re for mission crew, which you ain’t this time. Besides, you'll get all the beans and cornbread you want on th' campin' trip. Rarity and the Cutie Mark Crusaders are waitin' for us back in Ponyville!"

"Oh, yeah," Rainbow Dash said, slumping a bit at her console. "It's that time of year, isn't it?"

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "You didn't forget about the annual campin' trip ta Winsome  Falls, did ya?" she asked. 

"Well," Rainbow Dash pointed out, "We kinda had this satellite launch, and there's also training for Mission Thirteen to come..."

"Now, you know a promise is a promise," Applejack insisted. "And it won't be too much longer afore Scootaloo is a grown mare and on her own. Ya gotta make time for th' important things."

"I know," Rainbow Dash agreed. "And a promise is a promise. But..." She looked at the gallery, where Twilight, relieved from the hoof-shaking, was staring down at the ponies on the floor. "We're kinda on the clock here, right?"

"Will you relax?" Applejack said, stepping away from the flight director podium. "Th' changelin's don't launch their Minmus probe for another three days. It'll take a week after that ta get there. An' if somethin' goes wrong on it, they'll have to do it all over again. We can spare th' time ta have fun with our families, right?"

Dash smiled a little. "Yeah, you're right," she said. "But we'll just have to work harder when we get back."





"Psst," Rainbow Dash whispered. "You got any of that anti-itch cream left?"

"No," Applejack whispered back. "Ain't you over those flyder bites(440) yet? It's been a week!"

The two of them sat side by side in the crowded visitor gallery at Horseton  Space Center's mission control, watching as Changeling Space Program's Mission R5 made its final descent to the surface of Minmus. 

"I think a flyder hitched a ride back home in my backpack," Rainbow Dash hissed. "I'd swear I wake up every morning with fresh bites."

"Sssh!" Twilight Sparkle hissed. "Watch!"

The representatives of the Equestrian Space Agency settled into silence as, on CSP Mission Control's main screen, a half-wagon, half-rocket bearing a vague resemblance to a flyder(441) hovered on its own thrust just above the icy surface of Minmus, then shut down its engine and flopped forward onto its wide-sprawled wheels, where it bounced a couple times in the minimal gravity.

"I bet I could do that with Amicitas," Rainbow Dash whispered.

"Dash, be quiet!" Twilight whispered back. Then, ignoring her own order, she continued, "Amicitas weighs fifteen times as much, and the moon has four times the surface gravity. Don't you even think about it!"

"You sure sound like you've thought about it," Rainbow whispered back.

"I've done the math!" Twilight said, no longer whispering. "The nose gear would snap off like a dandelion stalk!"

"SSSSHHH!" half a dozen ponies hissed, bringing on a moment of silence... 

... broken by a shout from the mission control floor: "Why didn't you fools test the thing on the GROUND??"

"We DID test it on the ground, my queen!"

On the screen, instead of rolling over the steep hills of the Minmus highlands, R6 hopped and bounced like a bull in a rodeo. Attempts to steer it merely resulted in the probe lifting one forward wheel or the other in what appeared to be an attempt to flip the whole thing over. 

Shutters clicked on cameras from one end of the VIP gallery to the other. Pencils scrabbled across notepads with blazing speed. 

"I think the changeling moon flight just got delayed," Rainbow Dash chuckled.

"SSSSSHHHH!!" every reporter and photographer in the gallery hissed.

An hour later, after much trial and error(442), CSP-R5 did complete its mission... but at the cost of massive embarrassment to the changelings.

And equally massive relief to the ponies of Equestria Space Agency.


MISSION R5 REPORT


Mission summary: Land on Minmus and collect scientific data and temperature scans

Pilot: Probodobodyne probe core (controller: Dragonfly)

Flight duration:  9 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled:  1
Milestones: First wheeled vehicle on another world

Conclusions from flight: “Good enough” is NOT GOOD ENOUGH!


MISSION ASSESSMENT: SUCCESSFUL, DESPITE ITSELF





Footnotes:

(439) Applejack had brought a pot of slow-cooked beans and some cornbread for lunch after the first ESA launch. The beans proved popular among the other Elements of Harmony, and Applejack was forced to bring a larger batch for the second launch. By the infamous ESA-05 launch demand had grown beyond Applejack's ability to haul pre-cooked beans from Ponyville to Baltimare, and thus neither beans nor cornbread were in Cape Friendship's commissary at the time of Rainbow Dash's Very Nearly Bad Day. A number of Cape Friendship workers blamed the bad flight on the absence of the "lucky beans", in addition to the other causes. Rainbow Dash had insisted that the recipe be given to the commissary cooks in preparation for ESA-06, and beans and cornbread had become an ESA tradition ever since.

(440) Flyders are a pest endemic to the forests of northwestern Equestria. Thought to be a leftover of the Days of Madness (the period of Discord's rule, ending with the discovery and first use of the Elements of Harmony by Celestia and Luna), flyders are omnivorous, highly aggressive, and immune to all forms of insect repellent. Only their lack of venom keeps them from breaking into the official Top Ten List of Nightmarish Creatures of Equestria. 

(441) Not really. CSP-R5, with its four long spindly girder legs ending in wheels and its comparatively skinny central body, more resembled a water strider if anything. However, after their annual disaster of a camping trip, both Rainbow Dash and Applejack had flyders (metaphorically) on the brain, and after listening to stories from the trip Twilight Sparkle was halfway there as well.

(442) Light on the trial, very heavy on the error. It eventually proved easier to simply return the probe to the skies and fly cross-country to the target zone, then cover the last fifty meters by hopping, flopping and wobbling.




"Read all about it! Get your Ponyville Chronicle right here!"

"Ooh! I love reading about what's going on!" Pinkie Pie giggled, dropping a bit into the frog of the newsfoal's waiting hoof and taking one of the papers from the stack on the Ponyville train station platform. "It's always good to be a pony in the know, you know?"

"All I know is," Rainbow Dash said as she slumped on a bench, "we're FINALLY ready to begin sims on Flight Thirteen. And I've only got a week before I have to go practice for the Wonderbolts show in Tall Tale! When is that train gonna get here?"

"Aren't you the teensy eensy least bit interested in hearing all the good news in the paper?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"If you ask me," Applejack said, pulling her own luggage trunk up onto the platform, "Dash doesn't care what's in the paper if it isn't her own name."

"Hey, I have a healthy self-image, all right?" Rainbow Dash snapped. "Wasn't that train due ten minutes ago?"

"Huh," Pinkie Pie said. "New Shrubbery in Castle Garden. Isn't that interesting?"

"Whose castle?" Applejack asked. "I don't remember Twilight havin' any landscapin' done."

"Snoozeville," Dash said.

"How about this? The Neighbors Upstairs Second Series Announced."(443)

"Who has time for television?"

"Noodles Favorite Food of Whinnyapolis," Pinkie continued. "Author A. K. Yearling Announces Retirement. Changelings Go For Moon Rover on Friday." 

"WHAT?" Rainbow Dash sat bolt upright and yanked the newspaper out of Pinkie's hooves. "Let me read that!"

"But Dashie!" Pinkie protested. "We already knew all about the new rover!"

"Not that, THIS!" Rainbow protested, poking her hoof into the middle of the newspaper. "It can't be true!"

"Well, I'm kinda surprised noodles won the vote too, to be honest," Pinkie shrugged. "But different foods for different dudes!"

"No! Not that! I mean... rrrgh!!" Rainbow Dash threw the newspaper back at Pinkie Pie before rushing up to the ticket counter and shouting, "Hey! Hey, you! I need to change my ticket! When's the next connection to Vanhoover?"

Applejack groaned. "So much for simulations," she muttered. "Pinkie, you better go with her. Try to keep her from breakin' her fool neck, all right?"

Pinkie Pie looked over the newspaper at Dashie. "Her neck doesn't look that stupid to me," she said. "Of course, I don't really know what a stupid neck looks like. Or a smart neck, either. How could you tell?" Blue eyes crossed in intense thought. "I'm pretty sure I know what a happy or a sad neck look like, though. Maybe happy necks are stupid, because you know what they say, 'Ignorance is bliss,' right? Or maybe not, because there was this time I didn't know Mrs. Cake had used up all the blue icing on a birthday cake just when my blueberry-raspberry cupcakes were ready, and when I went to get some and couldn't find any I wasn't blissful at-"

"Pinkie. Just go, will ya?"





The modified robot car, no longer looking like a long-legged insect, rolled effortlessly across the surface of the moon, steering first one way and then the other without mishap.

Pencils scribbled and cameras clicked just as furiously as they had two weeks before. 

Applejack sat in her seat next to Twilight and watched in silence. Rainbow Dash hadn't come for this event: she and the other Wonderbolts were in training, practicing their show for Tall Tale. 

It was getting harder and harder to get away from Sweet Apple Acres for these things. Summer was coming to an end, and cider season lay only a few weeks away, The contractors building Twilight's new school seemed to be coming up with new and inventive ways of delaying construction(444). Every gathering of Twilight's core group of friends came at a great struggle against the centrifugal force of individual interests and duties. 

Applejack snuck a glance at the purple princess next to her. Rainbow Dash was the beating heart of ESA, the force that kept pushing forward, but Twilight Sparkle was the glue that held it together... and the strain showed on her face. Her cheek occasionally twitched. Blood vessels stood out in the whites of her eyes. About every third time she spoke in a conversation she went into babble mode, only cutting off her stream of thought with an obvious effort of will. Applejack had seen her in much worse shape... but that didn't make her current frame of mind good.

"Primary mission complete, Flight." That was the changeling at the controls of the probe- Dragonfly, that's right, that was her name. "Request permission to proceed with performance tests."

"Roger, capcom," Occupant said. "You are go for performance tests, beginning with speed run."

"Okay, flight. Let's see what's on the other side of that ridge. Rocket throttle to five percent."

Five percent of rocket throttle on the rover's four wheels was more than enough to goose it up to twenty-four meters per second in a few moments, at which point Dragonfly shut off the engine and kept the rover rolling on the electric motors in the wheels. The rover bounced along merrily on the uneven surface, moving much more steadily than its predecessor had on Minmus.

And then the rock appeared in its path.

"Oops!"

Whatever Dragonfly did with her controls took a second and a half to reach the rover, thanks to the difference between the instantaneous telepresence illusion projected on the wall and the speed-of-light radio controls she was using. By the time her order to steer away, hit the brakes, or whatever reached the probe, it was already tumbling end over end, one of its solar panels and its two front wheels sheared away. Other parts exploded or bounced away from the thing before what was left of it- one solar wing, the probe core housing, and the rocket's fuel tank and engine- came to a stop on the lunar surface. 

"Oooookay," Occupant's voice barely cut through the scribbling, photo-taking, and film-shooting, "that's something we know not to do next time."

Applejack slumped in her seat, wondering if there would be a next time. Or if the changelings, having proved they could build a workable rover(445), would move on to their main goal again.

All things considered, it didn't seem safe to bet on the first possibility.



MISSION R6 REPORT


Mission summary: Test booster for moon landing; land on the moon and collect scientific data and temperature scans

Pilot: Probodobodyne probe core (controller: Dragonfly)

Flight duration:  4 days, 1 hour, 14 minutes

Contracts fulfilled:  0
Milestones: First controlled landing on the moon by a probe

Conclusions from flight: Lightspeed lag and driving sixty miles per hour on rock-strewn terrain just don’t mix.


MISSION ASSESSMENT: LESS SUCCESSFUL THAN IT COULD HAVE BEEN




Footnotes:
 
(443) Of the several television plays Chrysalis had invested in, The Neighbors Upstairs was by far the most popular. This came as a mild surprise to Chrysalis, since she'd honestly thought a show that presented changelings in natural form would have turned off ninety percent of pony viewers. However, since she was perfectly happy to admit she was wrong if it benefited her and if she didn't have to say it out loud, she'd given the go-ahead to a new series about a changeling in Haywaii who had adventures and solved mysteries. The article whose headline Pinkie Pie had just read also referred to this project by its title: Macula PC.(446)
 
(444) Many of which, though Applejack didn't know this, they had developed while working on Horseton  Space Center. After over a year of near-constant construction and upgrades, work had tapered off there, and a lot of construction workers and contractors had shifted in groups to the new Ponyville project. They were discovering, to their great pleasure, that a lot of tricks which Queen Chrysalis had seen through instantly lasted for as long as a week before either Princess Twilight or Applejack put an end to them. This made them very happy workers, and in turn it made the merchants and landlords of Ponyville even happier.
 
(445) Build it, but alas, not drive it.
 
(446) Private Changeling.


 

"All right, Rainbow Dash," Starlight Glimmer's voice echoed over the comms, "we're all go for main engine test. Stand by for simulated liftoff."

"Yeah, yeah," Rainbow muttered irritably, and then louder, "Amicitas copies, standing by."

Not that she was actually sitting in Amicitas. The ship which would take her into space in eight days' time, and to the moon three days after that, currently rested in the VAB undergoing final flight refit. Rainbow Dash sat instead in the much smaller cockpit mockup room attached to the immense rocket engine testing center, situated in its own two-mile radius no-go zone well away from everything else at Cape Friendship. 

On the other side of a double-layered reinforced wall stood reproductions of six engines- the three liquid-fueled main engines used in launch, and the three much smaller engines powered by the single, massive block of enchanted diamond behind them, all of which bolted to a gantry whose base extended down into the concrete foundations of the building itself. 

A laypony, at first glance, would have thought the wall and the reinforced mount overkill on an absurd level. Rainbow Dash, having taken part in several of these tests(447), knew better. Hard experience had demonstrated the heavy engineering to be both necessary and adequate(448). For her own part, she would have preferred to conduct the exercise by radio from mission control, or from her own house back in Ponyville. But she also wanted to be able to hear the sounds the engines made when in operation, and this was the best way.

"We're going to start a simulated launch countdown from t minus twenty seconds," Starlight said. "Fuel and oxidizer pumps active." 

Off a significant distance from Rainbow's simulated cockpit, and separated from the test building by a freestanding blast wall, giant refrigerated pressure tanks holding liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen began to creak and knock as internal mechanisms passed the dense fluids into pipes which, on the switch of a few valves, would feed them into the engine mechanisms, Rainbow couldn't hear it, but she'd seen them tested before, and the creaking never failed to worry her... not that she'd let anypony see it.

"Fifteen seconds."

The systems Amicitas used had grown too complicated for the old system of allowing the pilot to launch the rocket just whenever. The rocket engines had to be ignited and checked for thrust balance before releasing the clamps which held the giant imbalanced stack on the pad. Only after the ship left the ground would Rainbow Dash take control; until then, launch control on the ground ran the show by wire.

"Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven."

Rainbow wiggled a little in her flight spacesuit, placing her forehooves on the mock flight yoke and throttle. Behind her she heard faint clanks as the valves opened, pumping high-pressure fuel and oxygen into the reaction chambers of the three main engines.

"Main engine start. Four."

The wooshing sound of fuel got drowned out almost instantly by a roar that still threatened to deafen Rainbow Dash, despite thick walls and her communications headset. Her cockpit shook with vibration transmitted through the test facility's walls.

"Three. Two. One. Zero. Liftoff!"

Under her hoof the throttle shifted itself forwards to full power, and the roar grew louder. The mission clock began ticking on the console of mocked-up controls. 

"Twenty seconds! Throttle down to eighty percent for max Q."

"Copy eighty percent for max Q." This was the first actual thing Rainbow had to do. She pulled the throttle back a bit, just as she would in an actual flight about this point as the rising ship approached the sound barrier. Behind her, the roaring reduced slightly. 

"Forty seconds," Starlight said. "Performance nominal..." The words, begun with certainty, trailed off towards the end. "Amicitas, read me mana battery power level."

Rainbow Dash glanced over the mockup controls for the readout. "Uh... mana battery at one hundred, repeat full charge."

"Huh. Guess we have a bad gauge here. Past max Q and go for throttle-up."

"Roger, go at throttle-up." Dash pushed the throttle forward again until it wouldn't move any farther.

Through the roaring there came a faint crunching sound, followed by a loud BANG. Instantly every light in the mockup capsule, including the interior illumination, went red.

"SHUTDOWN! ABORT, ABORT, ABORT!" Starlight's voice shouted over the comms. "Fire crews stand by! Do NOT enter the testing facility until ordered!"

The roaring ceased, replaced by the almost but not quite totally muffled sound of an ordinary fire. 

"Fuel shutoff confirmed! Fire teams, go go go!"

Rainbow Dash sighed, slumping back in the mock flight couch and slapping open the latch of her flight harness with one hoof. "Control, Amicitas," she called. "Starlight, what the hay just happened?"

"I think it was your gauge that was faulty on the mana battery, Dash," Starlight said. "In here we were showing a rapid drop-off of power levels. Either the enchantment was faulty or the mana engines were sucking down more power than they should have. Either way, the battery was overdrawn and had a critical failure."

"In other words, it blew up," Dash said.

"In about a million tiny pieces," Starlight agreed glumly. "I guess diamond is just too brittle for this size of battery after all. It doesn't look like the engines are actually damaged, but we'll have to spend a couple days inspecting them to be sure."

"We haven't got a couple of days!" Rainbow Dash insisted. "Those engines need to be inside Amicitas five days from now so we can get the ship on the stack!"

"I know, I know," Starlight said. "But there's no point in launching until we know the battery works. And a fifty percent failure rate just isn't acceptable. I don't want to strand you in moon orbit."

Rainbow Dash sighed again. "All right, that's it. As soon as you give me the all-clear to get out of this thing, you and I are gonna go talk to Twilight about this."

Half an hour later Rainbow Dash kicked in the door of Twilight's office in the Cape  Friendship administration building, shouting, "Twilight, we gotta talk about- huh?" She froze mid-rant(449) as she saw Twilight Sparkle, head bowed in utter depression between two immense stacks of paperwork. "Hey, Twilight, what's wrong?" She fluttered into the room, circling around Twilight's desk like a worried mother bird. "Did the changelings launch a sneak mission to the moon already?"

"No," Twilight said miserably. A quill slowly danced across the page in front of her, idly lifting itself over to the inkwell for a dip.

"Don't mind her," Spike said as he peeled himself off the wall behind the door Rainbow had slammed open. "She just got a letter from her parents. They won an airship cruise for the whole family, and she THINKS she can't go."

"But I CAN'T!" Twilight insisted, showing life at last. "There's the friendship school to work on! There's the map back at the castle, which could summon somepony at any time for a friendship mission! There's the administration of this space program! There's the tests of the magic rocket engines, the moon lander-"

"Um, about that," Starlight Glimmer said as she poked her head around Rainbow. Rainbow pushed her back with a quiet shushing noise.

"-and flight sims, and the cruise leaves dock in seven days! Launch day is in eight! I'd miss the launch!"

"I told her," Spike grumbled, "that's why we have backups."

"I'm not going to make Moondancer take my place just so I can have a fun vacation!" Twilight snapped. 

Spike looked at Rainbow. "Make her go to the moon?" he asked. "Make her?"

"You know what I mean!" Twilight snapped. "I'm a princess! I have responsibilities! I can't just go around handing things off to other ponies!"

"You mean, like Celestia does?" Starlight asked, exchanging knowing nods with Spike.

"That's totally different!"

"All right, I've heard enough," Rainbow Dash said, dropping down directly in front of Twilight. "Look at yourself, Twily," she continued, waving a forehoof up and down at her friend. "You're working yourself to exhaustion and thinking yourself to a frazzle! You're in no shape to fly! You need rest!" She waved both her forehooves as she stated, "Everypony, this is the face of the pony most in need of a vacation in all Equestria!"

"I do NOT need a vacation!" Twilight insisted.

Rainbow Dash looked her in the eyes. "Twilight," she said, "somewhere in Equestria is the pony who loves lists of things more than anypony else except you."

"Harsh," muttered Spike.

"But not wrong," whispered Starlight.

"And somewhere among their fifty gazillion lists," Rainbow Dash continued, "they have a list labeled, 'Ponies Who Need a Vacation.' And just under the title, it says, 'Number One: Twilight Sparkle!'"(450)

"But... but I can't!" Twilight shrieked. "I know Moondancer's been doing her best, training as my backup, but if something goes wrong with the magic engines she can't fix them! And she's not strong enough to power them by herself!" She waved a hoof at Starlight Glimmer. "Starlight could, but she's not trained as an astromare yet! And there isn't anypony else, Dash!"

"That's all right," Dash said. "Because I'm flying alone."

"WHAT?"

"Well, I'm certainly not flying with you," Dash insisted. "Like I just said- you're not fit to fly. You're worn out, your mental state is a wreck, you haven't had the time to put in the training you really need... the way you are now, you'd be more of a hindrance than a help!"

"But-"

"And besides," Rainbow Dash pressed on, "we don't really need you, or Moondancer really, because we're not taking the magic engines up on this flight. We've had too many system failures on the ground, Twilight. They're not going to be flight-ready in time!"

"But if we use sapphire or amethyst instead of-"

"Not ready in time!" Rainbow repeated. "We still need weeks of tests! Without a single failure! Not weeks where we keep hoping for best two out of three! Yeah, the engines work great when they work, but when we're up around the moon we need to know, for certain, that when the throttle goes forward the battery isn't going to explode or the oscillation crystal isn't going to shatter or the thrust bell isn't going to crack and disintegrate. Will we know that in time, Twilight?"

Twilight hung her head. "No," she said quietly. "But the changelings are going to launch in three weeks. We have to launch on schedule."

"I know," Rainbow said. "So here's my plan. We take Amicitas to low orbit over Equus. We launch the moon lander, dock it there, and do those tests close to home. Then we launch another probe, a Mission Fifteen, with a huge tank of fuel to refill Amicitas's internal tanks. We put fuel and oxidizer refill ports inside the engine bay and put a couple of fuel hoses in the ship kit that I can use to link up with the probe's fuel tanks through the docking port. Then I go out to the moon, see how low I can orbit, take photos of landing sites, and come home. Pack extra food so I can make some aerobraking maneuvers to slow down before final re-entry. It's not as simple as the old mission plan, but it's a thing we can do reliably and safely. Right?"

"But Amicitas is the future," Twilight protested. "The magic thrusters will revolutionize space travel."

"Yeah, but not right now," Rainbow Dash said. "And what we can do in five days is remount the liquid fuel engines, and ONLY those engines, put extra fuel tanks in instead of the mana battery, and work out how to build and launch a refueling probe in about a week. And however important it is to show the world how wonderful Amicitas is," she finished, "it won't make a darn if Chrysalis gets to the moon before we do!"

"Well... but..." Twilight looked Rainbow Dash in the eyes. "Even so, I don't want you to go alone. Remember how rough the ride back into atmosphere was on Amicitas's first flight?"

Dash nodded. To the outside world, that re-entry had looked uneventful. In reality, Dash had wrestled the controls of the tail-heavy ship and fought like a mare on locoweed to keep the ship from tumbling out of control during aerobraking. "Yeah. So?"

"If it had gone wrong," Twilight said, "I could have saved you. Shield, teleport, I'd have managed it. If something goes wrong around the moon, and I'm not there..."

"Yeah, stop right there," Rainbow Dash said. "To tell the truth, I'd rather have you here on the ground. Because if something does go wrong, and I get stranded around the moon... who else could I trust to make sure somepony came to rescue me?"

"Princess Celestia..."

"Princess Celestia would try," Rainbow Dash agreed. "But Princess Twilight Sparkle would know how to do it. And she'd make it happen if she had to walk to the deepest pit in Tartarus and fight her way back out. And I know it." She smiled and added, "Because I know you'd never leave me hangin'."

Twilight shook her head. "That's right," she said. "And thank you for saying that. But I still want to go with you, Dash."

"Not the way you are now," Rainbow insisted. "It's time you took some time off. Moondancer will take care of space program stuff while you're gone."

"I can work on the friendship school," Starlight volunteered. 

"And I can keep up the friendship log and answer your fan mail!" Spike added. 

"And when I get back," Rainbow Dash said, "you'll be rested and relaxed, we'll know how Amicitas and the moon lander work, and we can finish training for the actual moon landing. Before the changelings can do it!"

"But... Rainbow Dash, Starlight, you're my friends," Twilight said. "And Spike, you're part of the family too. You ought to go on the cruise too! I can't just leave all of this work for you!"

"What's that?" Spike asked. "I can't hear you. Because you're on VACATION!"

Twilight turned to Starlight. "Starlight?"

Starlight looked at Spike. "You know, I could swear I just heard Twilight's voice," she said. "But that can't be, because she's ON VACATION!"

"I know, right?" Spike asked.

Twilight looked at Rainbow Dash, who hovered with her forelegs crossed. Sighing, she gave in. "I guess I could use some time off," she said. "And I can use the days before the cruise to sketch out the refueling ship and-"

"Aaaaap, aap aap aap!" Rainbow Dash scolded, reaching down and yanking Twilight out from behind her desk and into the air. "Vacation! Behind desk is not vacation! Drawing spaceship blueprints? Not vacation! VACATION is vacation! So VACATE!"

"All right, all right, I'm going!" Twilight said. "I'll fly straight to Ponyville and pack my suitcases! One for visiting my parents in Canterlot, and one for the cruise!"

"Sounds like a plan!" Rainbow said, allowing Twilight to descend back to the floor. "Have a good time!"

"Thanks, everypony," Twilight said. "And good luck with the launch. I'll be listening from the cruise." With that she turned and, with a spring in her step she hadn't had before, marched down the hall to the administration building lobby.

"WHEW!" Rainbow Dash sighed, slumping in midair. "I thought she'd never give in."

Spike held up a warning claw. "Wait for it," he said. He held up three fingers, then two, then one...

"CRUISES HAVE ACTIVITIES, RIGHT?" Twilight shouted from halfway down the hall. "GIMME SOME PAPER! I NEED TO MAKE A SCHEDULE!"

"There it is," Spike said, smiling smugly.

"Really?" Rainbow Dash asked. 

"You've known her longer than I have," Starlight said. "But even I know that no power in the world will stop Twilight from organizing things."



Footnotes:

(447) Rainbow Dash only took part in those tests which were more involved than "turn it on, turn it off", a distinct minority of rocket engine tests. But even this limited experience had made a deep and lasting impression on Rainbow Dash... and, on two occasions for which she was present, a deep impression in the concrete and steel as well.

(448) Adequate, that is, so far. The thing about the word "adequate" as regards testing rockets and other explosive devices is that you can only truly learn if the word should have been "inadequate" the hard way. Oh, math could say this or that, but math didn't know everything.

(449) Totally blocking the doorway and preventing Starlight Glimmer from entering behind her. Not that Starlight minded that much, since it gave her a chance to catch her breath after her desperate gallop across miles of empty space center grounds attempting in vain to keep up with Equestria's fastest mare.

(450) Rainbow Dash didn't know it, but the hypothetical pony she was talking about was Princess Celestia, and she did indeed have a list of Ponies Who Need a Vacation. However, she put herself on top of that list, not Twilight. In fact, because Celestia knew more ponies than Rainbow Dash did and had a broader perspective on things, Twilight actually came in well down the list at #17, behind the royal palace pastry chef Velvet Fondant (#4), Raven Inkwell (#8), Tempest Shadow (penciled in at #12.5), and Pinkie Pie (#15).




"Forty meters at zero point four."

"Looking good, Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash's voice replied through the telepresence spell, as the target blip of ESA-14 crept cautiously towards Amicitas's dorsal docking port. 

For Equestria Space Agency's Mission Thirteen, the previous four days had been as smooth as Sweet Apple Acres cider(451). Amicitas's launch would never become routine, as razor-edge as the range of successful flight profiles to orbit was for the ship, but the launch had come as close as possible, leaving slightly more fuel in place than Mission Eleven had landed with(452). Once there, Rainbow Dash had it easy, while Applejack and the other ponies on the ground had busted flank to get the Mission Fourteen stack assembled and on the pad.

Mission Fourteen, being so much lighter than the previous launch, had it even easier getting to orbit. The aeroshell fairing had protected the fragile moon lander exactly as designed, then peeled away on schedule with zero damage to the craft inside. Solar panels had extended, the little ship had powered up, and within half a day it took up station in orbit less than a hundred meters away from the much larger Amicitas. 

Now Applejack watched Fluttershy at what would normally be the CAPCOM station, sweating and trembling as she operated the controls that guided ESA-14 slowly and cautiously towards its target. A pony focused on the image on the telepresence wall, looking at the steady, direct glide of the bug-like lander towards the winged tube of Amicitas, wouldn't have known that the soft, quiet, steady voice calling out a slowly reducing distance every few seconds belonged to a pony on the brink of nervous breakdown. But Applejack knew, and she worried. 

"Twenty meters. Velocity steady."

"You got it, Fluttershy. Just like in the sims."

Applejack suspected that the only thing allowing Fluttershy to hold herself together was Rainbow Dash's confident voice responding to every callout. According to the communications protocols- protocols Dash herself had insisted on after Flight Five- she ought to order the chatter stopped. For that matter, Dash using Fluttershy's name instead of either Baltimare or Fourteen broke a flight rule. But some things were more important than rules, so Applejack remained silent while Dash provided extra struts for Fluttershy's confidence.

"Ten meters. On target. RCS off."

The lander's maneuvering thrusters- the Reaction Control System- shut down. The head of the lander coasted down on the screen, about to meet Amicitas's back. Two identical-looking rings, one on each ship, drew closer at the rate of about one hoof per second.

"Electromagnets on."

"Electromagnets on."

Inside the docking rings on each ship, electricity flowed to powerful magnets, amplifying their power. The two ships accelerated together on screen for a moment, and-

"Contact!" "Contact!"

-they met, the smaller ship wobbling around the point of contact for a moment or two.

"Soft capture confirmed!" Rainbow Dash's voice called out. "Engaging clamps!"

Inside the ring, a series of small but sturdily-built hooks extended from one ring into the specially-made holes inside the other.

"Red... red... green light!"
The hooks turned sideways like twelve keys in twelve locks. Beneath them, servomotors whirred, pulling the connection tight.

"Hard capture confirmed!" Rainbow Dash called out. "Baltimare, this is Amicitas: Chickadee(453) is home!"

Hooves stamped the floor throughout ESA Mission Control, including the press gallery(454). Applejack let the applause go on, stepping away from her station to walk over to the capcom seat, where Fluttershy had slumped back into the backrest, panting, eyes rolling with relief. She waved a hoof at Moondancer and Minuette, who walked over and gingerly lifted the prostrate pegasus out of the chair. 

As the two unicorns carried Fluttershy away to recover from the strain, the new capcom pony came onto the circuit. "Excellent work, both of you."

"Is that you, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked. "You're back early! What happened to the cruise?"

Easing into the chair just vacated by Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle sighed. "Don't ask," she said. "Flight, capcom?"

"Oh, right," Applejack muttered. Quickly putting her own headset back on, she said, "Capcom is now Twilight Sparkle. Capcom, Thirteen is go for inspection of Chickadee, with simulated moon landing operations to begin 0900 tomorrow."

"I can hear you, Baltimare," Rainbow Dash chided. "Can we get a return to normal comms protocol now?"

Applejack nodded silently to Twilight Sparkle, who said, "That's affirmative, Thirteen. And once you're done with the post-docking checklist, we need to review mission protocols for the lander shake-down. We have to launch Flight Fifteen tomorrow and dock it with you the day after to stay on schedule."

"Roger that, Baltimare," Rainbow Dash said. "Just a second while I unseal the docking ports, and we can do the geek thing all you want."

"It's not the geek thing!" Twilight insisted. "It's being safe!"

"Tomayto, tomahto," Rainbow Dash repeated back.

Applejack, back at her station, relaxed. She almost felt right at home. 



Footnotes:

(451) Which she'd insisted be included in flight rations for this mission, though the amount she'd actually gotten hadn't been nearly what she wanted. Applejack had replied that it was the very first pressings of the season, that Dash had gotten the jump on the line she'd always wanted, and it wasn't asking too much that the blue pegasus be a little bit more grateful.

(452) Which had proved vitally necessary on the first flight. Amicitas’s hull did provide some lift in atmosphere, but only at high speeds in low altitude did it produce enough for sustained flight, and even then only under power. Otherwise the thing “flew” like a pink brick, capable of maybe twenty seconds of almost level gliding if handled just right before the thing stalled out and fell. That meant, without at least a little fuel for the engines, Amicitas was going to hit the ground wherever momentum and atmospheric resistance dropped it, winglets or no winglets. On the first flight they’d overshot Cape Friendship and had to get on the power to make a U-turn and stay above the water long enough to reach the runway. There had still been a little fuel left afterwards, but carrying less landing fuel on future flights never once entered into either Rainbow Dash’s or Twilight Sparkle’s heads.

(453) The name was Fluttershy’s second choice. Her first suggestion, based on the way the lander looked with its solar arrays extended, had been Flyder. The only no votes for the name had been Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Rarity, but they had been LOUD no votes- so loud that even Chickadee was a pet name, and the flight was officially the nameless ESA-14.

(454) Which upset the cameraponies who were capturing the event for television, because the bouncing threw everything out of focus.




"Fourteen(455), you are go for ascent stage ignition!"

"Copy go for ascent." 

Rainbow Dash stood at the controls of the lander, one hoof on the switch which would dump two-thirds of the little ship's mass to tumble away in orbit, eventually to decay and fall back into atmosphere in a brief ball of flame. It still seemed a waste; there was more than enough fuel still in the descent stage's tanks to bring it back to Amicitas intact. If it had been designed for in-flight refueling... 

... but it hadn't. The descent stage was totally inaccessible from inside the lander's cockpit, which precluded any orbital refueling. And besides- as Twilight had pointed out- they wouldn't really know if the ascent stage worked until they tried it, which meant throwing away a working descent stage. And if, for whatever reason, the staging failed, then better to have a working descent stage that could get Dash back to safety, at least potentially.

All very logical, but Rainbow Dash still disliked the idea. Twilight, who had spent over a year working towards a single reusable multi-purpose spaceship, was going to land on the moon using a disposable ship, while Chrysalis, whose organization ran entirely on expensive, disposable, one-and-done rockets, were going to land on the moon in the same ship they went there in. There was something backwards to that, but Dash didn't have the egghead words to explain it.

"Ascent stage ignition in three, two, one." A beat after one her hoof hit the switch, and the lander bucked underneath her as the tiny ascent engine lit. The tiny dot of Amicitas, which had shrunk for the past hour as Dash performed maneuvers on the descent stage, began growing larger again as the lander slowed in orbit, dropping back down to the lower orbit it had begun in.

"We read successful decoupling and ignition of ascent engine," Twilight Sparkle's voice replied. "Set shutdown clock for ten seconds."

Rainbow Dash twisted a knob on the controls. "Shutdown clock set."

"Engage clock in four... three... two... one... mark!"

"Clock engaged!" Dash reported. She'd hit the button right as Twilight called the mark, and she watched as the clock counted down the seconds. The shaking and roaring ceased the moment the clock hit zero, leaving Dash in free-fall again, held in place by a forehoof on the controls and the clingy stuff on the boots of her rear hooves. 

"Shutdown on time, Baltimare," Dash reported. "How's my time back to Amicitas?"

"We show Amicitas intercept in seventeen minutes at three point four meters per second relative," Twilight responded. "Well within RCS manual control parameters. Good work, Rainbow."

"Thanks, Twi." Dash shifted her rear hooves, testing the grip of the cling-strips. "The main engines throttle fine on the descent stage. Thrusters kick like Big Mac, though."

Pause. "Applejack wants to know how you know how hard her brother kicks, Fourteen."

"Ask Applejack how many of her trees I've been napping in when her brother is applebucking."

"That explains it... Applejack says it better explain it... anyway, any other observations you want to share, Dash?"

Rainbow Dash looked at the controls. "Some more advanced computers on the lander would be nice," she said. "And map and trajectory projection screens. This computer only holds one landing and one ascent profile, right? Every time I have to go manual, all I have to go by are half the instruments and the port-side window. For a shakedown it's okay, but for actual landing this ship absolutely needs two ponies unless you get some more computers in here."

"Pinkie Pie's doing the best with the electronics we have," Twilight replied. "The minotaurs at CSP are keeping their best designs to themselves. A computer that can do what you're talking about would just weigh too much for the lander."

Yeah, and if we weren't racing CSP to the moon, we could take our time and develop the good computers, Rainbow Dash thought. And get the magic thrusters working reliably on a scale larger than RCS. And figure out a way for Amicitas to land under its own power without an atmosphere. And a bunch of other stuff.

But, since all of that was stuff that couldn't be said on a hot mike, Dash just said, "Well, you asked. Aside from that it's a pretty good craft. Build another like it, and let's go to the moon!"

"Not until you get back," Twilight said. "We need photos to pick out a good landing zone."

"Right, right," Dash muttered. "Lemme know when I'm about to pass Amicitas, okay?"

“A little more than twelve minutes to go,” Twilight replied. “I’ll tell Spitfire to remind you. We’re going to swap out capcoms now so she can get started on launch prep for Flight Fifteen. Launch is a bit more than four hours away.”

“Okay, Twilight. Talk to you later.” Dash shifted position again, trying to work out the kink in her back (456), and leaned over for a moment to check the readouts on the copilot side of the lander. Everything seemed good to go.

Tomorrow I refuel. And then… next stop moon!



Footnotes:

(455) The orbiter, Amicitas, was Flight Thirteen. The lander, Chickadee, was Flight Fourteen. So long as Rainbow Dash was flying in the lander, her call sign was Fourteen, not Thirteen. This might or might not have had some influence on her desire to bring the lander back intact and keep using it.

(456) On most worlds equine life forms can only achieve bipedal stances for the briefest of moments. The ponies of Equus, with their extremely flexible and versatile joints, could do it for longer periods, even indefinitely with training and practice. But most ponies thought such a thing would get you a job with the Cirque du Celeste in Las Pegasus as a master contortionist- all the more so pegasi, who never had the problem of needing to stretch to get something off the top shelf.




Twilight Sparkle looked around Cape Friendship’s empty Vehicle Assembly  Building, as the crawler (457) carried the Flight Fifteen stack out to the launchpad with the greatest of care. “What have we got left?” she asked.

“Not much,” Minuette said. “One Swivel and one Terrier- that’s it for engines, except for your test designs. Three or four of the smaller liquid fuel tanks. Oh, and half a dozen Flea boosters, and the Mark One capsule.” The pale blue unicorn shrugged. “To be honest, we couldn’t even have built the Fifteen stack without the parts left over from the Prance-Germane Joint Space Initiative.”(458)

“Well, make up a list of all the stuff we’ll need to do Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen over again,” Twilight said. 

“Already done!” Minuette said. “Appleoosa says they’re still finishing up the boosters for the changeling dress rehearsal in eight days. They have back-stock for some of the parts, but they won’t be able even to begin building new parts until about a week from now. Call it three weeks from today until delivery.”

Twilight scuffed a hoof across the concrete floor. “And that’s if their moon shot doesn’t bump our order,” she muttered. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken that vacation.”

Minuette shrugged. “That’s how it is, Twilight,” she said. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think they’ll bump the order. Cherry Berry told me they couldn’t even begin planning their final moon launch stack until they see how Mission Twenty-Three performs. It’ll take days after she gets back from her flight before they can begin construction.”

“And meanwhile Chrysalis will be…” Twilight shook her head. “No, I’m not going to worry about that right now. What good news do you have?”

“Well,” Minuette said, “we’ve successfully tested docking in the lab of two upgraded docking ports. We’ve included connections which will allow the docked ships to link up resources- electricity, fuel and oxidizer.” She grinned and spread her forehooves wide. “Just think of the possibilities! We can build giant super-ships in space to go to the other planets! Or we could have a research platform in orbit! No, wait- a hotel! A space hotel for those tourists Chrysalis keeps sending up!”

“Well, that’d give the changelings something to do,” Twilight said, smiling. “And it would make it easier on pilots. No fiddling with hoses like Rainbow Dash will have to do tomorrow.”

“And Starlight’s conducting the second stress test on the decentralized power array for the magic thrusters right now,” Minuette continued. “So far only one failure out of twenty batteries!”

“That’s excellent news!” Twilight said. “Now all we need to do is test the emergency circuit breakers!” She rubbed her chin with one hoof. “I need to think of a way to simulate a power failure cascade.”

“Oh, Starlight already did that,” Minuette said. “We’re building a rig where a lot of dummy batteries are hooked into the system along with the real ones. We just set up switches to flip from a good battery to a dummy, and repeat quickly-“

“Yes, that might work!” Twilight said, grinning. “And if the breakers scram, we’ll know the new system is ready to fly!”

“Now all we need,” Minuette said, “is one more changeling screw-up. Give us two more weeks, and the space race is ours!”



Footnotes:

(457) The changelings might be willing to throw as many workers at the problem of carrying a rocket to the pad as necessary, but Twilight refused to put up with such a wasteful and dangerous system. Two unicorns were sufficient to operate the enormous track-driven platform that carted the rockets out to Cape Friendship’s pad at a safe, sedate 1.5 kilometers per hour, with much less danger that a rash of sneezing or hiccups could destroy hundreds of thousands of bits worth of spacecraft in an instant.

(458) The Fancy and Germane ponies, seeing the writing on the wall, had merged their efforts with ESA’s six weeks prior. With that merger, the only space programs remaining were the ESA and Changeling Space Program… and the diamond dogs’ Project Stardust, or so they claimed.




“How’s it going, Dash?” Twilight’s voice rang through Rainbow Dash’s headphones. “You’re running behind schedule.”

Dash wrapped one forehoof over a long, ribbed length of flexible pipe. “Have you ever tried,” she growled, “wrestling two heavy insulated hoses in free-fall?”

“Um, yes,” Twilight replied. “In simulations. I was with you, remember?”

“Guiding hoses from one point to another while hanging from a gantry rig on the ground is NOT the same thing!” Dash replied. “In free-fall these stupid things take on a life of their own! First I had to clear the hoses out of the engine bay so I could reach the intake sockets. Then I had to straighten them out enough so I could get the ends hooked in to the refueler sockets on the other side of the docking port, right?”

“Oh, Rainbow, why did you do that?” Twilight asked. “You know the procedure-“ 

“Because they were closer to the docking port that to the engine bay hatch.” Dash grunted as she yanked a coil of the recalcitrant hose in the direction she wanted. “But the hose wants to stay curled back up, right? Except for the parts that want to stay straight!” She grunted louder as a couple of coils of hose flipped to encircle her. 

“We trained for it as a two-pony job, Dash.” Twilight Sparkle wasn’t even trying to keep that annoying lecturing tone out of her voice. It was one of the very few things about her friend that really drove Rainbow Dash up the wall. “But you said you didn’t need a second pony on this flight.”

“All right, I needed a second pony for this part! Happy now?!” Dash pushed up and out of the encircling coils, found a hoof-hold on one of the storage cabinets in Amicitas’s midships section, and brought herself to a halt. By lucky chance more than design, both the loose ends of hose now floated close enough to the hatch leading to the engine bay that Dash could stretch them the rest of the way while keeping a hoof on the hatch frame for stability. “Hold on, I almost got it!” 

It turned out not to be quite that simple, but after a few more minutes she had the oxidizer hose’s connector ring into its matching socket. “There!” she shouted in triumph, slamming down the locking collar to seal the hose in place. A green light over the nozzle changed to yellow. “Oxidizer at amber light, repeat oxidizer tank ready for pumping!”

“Stand by, Dash,” Twilight said. “We don’t want to pump until you’re clear. Cryonic fluids are dangerous even through insulation.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Rainbow Dash muttered. “I wasn’t saying to start pumping right this very second!” She shifted her position in the hatchway, hooked the tip of a hoof under the collar of the fuel line, and drew it to her position. A soft kick brought it up to her eye-level, where she grabbed it in both forehooves, twisted it so the mouth of the hose faced the filler socket, and released it long enough for one forehoof to resume its hold on the hatch frame. The other forehoof slid the hose end into the socket… 

… where it clinked, and bounced back. 

“What the hay?” Rainbow Dash asked out loud.

“Something wrong, Thirteen?” Twilight called over the comms. 

“Nah, nothin’ important,” Dash replied offhandedly. “Hose just doesn’t wanna go in, that’s all.” Bracing her rear hooves against the hatch frame, she grabbed the hose with both hooves again and slammed the hose onto its socket. On the third try it finally seated properly. The green light for the fuel turned red, showing a bad seal, but after a couple of less-than-gentle twists of the locking collar it turned orange, matching its twin on the oxidizer intake.

“Fuel light is amber, repeat amber,” Rainbow Dash said. “Go for fuel and oxidizer transfer once I clear the midships.”

“Thirteen, we’d like you to suit up first,” Twilight said. “We got a brief red light on the fuel intake seal down here. We want you to watch and make sure there’s not a leak.”

“I’m pretty sure it was just the hose being balky,” Rainbow Dash said. “Got a good seal now. But all right, I’m suiting up now.”

In an emergency the space suits designed jointly by Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Dragonfly could be donned without the cooling garment undersuit in less than ninety seconds. This wasn’t an emergency, so Dash shucked her flight jumpsuit, shimmied into the skin-tight(459) spacesuit undergarment, and then carefully went through the checklist of spacesuit sealing and testing. 

Thus, Rainbow Dash didn’t bother stifling her groan when, after over ten minutes of careful bother in zero-gravity, the ten minutes of high-pressure transfer of fuel and oxidizer went without a hitch or even a hint of a leak. “There!” she cried out as the lights went from yellow back to green. “Just a stubborn hose, like I told you!”

“Better safe than sorry, Thirteen,” Twilight said. “That said, we’re going to watch the fuel system for a little while just to make sure.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dash said, already reaching up to counter-rotate the locking collars to release the hoses and restore the auto-safe tank seals. 

For a brief moment the light flickered red again as the hose unclamped from the fuel intake, but it almost instantly went green again, and it stayed green as Rainbow Dash removed the hose. 

Rainbow Dash gave it no further thought, especially not after she spent another half hour wrestling with the hoses before, fed up with the whole business, she left them to float free in the midships compartment, not bothering to store them back in the engine bay.

Two hours later the main engines re-lit, and after a two minute and thirty second burn, Amicitas was firmly set on its trans-lunar orbit trajectory. 

Throughout the burn, not a single indicator on the entire fuel system showed anything but green.



Footnote:

(459) Skin-tight except in the hindquarters, where they were embarrassingly loose… and padded. The thought of what that padding was there to do inspired almost all non-changeling astronauts to spend the absolute minimum time necessary wearing a spacesuit undergarment.



“Ten seconds to shutdown, Thirteen.”

“Amicitas copies.”

On the far side of the moon from Equus, a pointy bit of metal pushed a plume of plasma ahead of itself, decelerating, allowing itself to be captured in the grip of the moon’s gravity well. The sole occupant of that metal shell watched the controls, watched the readouts, hoof resting atop the throttle controls, ready to cut power from its current fifty percent to zero on cue.

“Five. Four. Three. Two. One!”

“Shutdown!”

Rainbow Dash’s hoof lifted off the throttle, now resting in its cutoff position, as the roar of Amicitas’s engines died into a series of rapidly fading knocks and metallic creaks. Something flickered for just an instant among the lights and dials, but when Dash’s eyes scanned them again, everything showed normal. Everything that should be green was green; every gauge that had a normal range had the needle square in its center.

“Thirteen, we show Amicitas in an orbit of twenty-six by twenty-four kilometers,” Twilight Sparkle’s voice said in a softer voice than the countdown. “We read fuel and oxidizer at thirty-seven percent each. You are go for orbital operations around the moon!”

“All right!” Rainbow Dash grinned. “Let that Ad Astra cut us one of those Royal Astronomical Society checks for a change!” She grinned as she added, “And if she’s listening, the name is spelled R-A-I-N-B-O-W-“

“Focus, Thirteen!” Twilight Sparkle snapped. “Besides, that money goes to fund the satellite network. You know that!”

“Can’t blame a pony for trying,” Dash replied. 

“And since when were you in it for the money anyway?”

“I’m not in it for the money!” Dash protested. “I’m in it for the adventure!” In a softer voice she admitted, “Though I have got my eye on a custom embroidered patch for my flight jacket…”

A particularly exasperated horse noise hissed over the telepresence comms channel. 

“But getting back to the mission,” Rainbow Dash said, “I’m looking at the Mission Day Ten and Eleven checklist. For the rest of today I just take standard photos of the surface along the moon’s equator on the Equus side. Tomorrow morning I descend to ten kilometers and take photos in the same zone. Then, if fuel permits, I go suborbital and then burn back to orbit to test Amicitas’s fuel consumption for the emergency landing scenario. I burn for home first thing on Day Twelve and have my first aerobraking pass late at night on Day Fourteen, with a Day Fifteen landing at Cape Friendship. Anything else I missed?”

“No, Thirteen, that covers the main action points,” Twilight Sparkle agreed. 

“All right, then!” Dash said. “I’m gonna have a sip of cider with my lunch meal, then! And thank Applejack again, will you?”

“I’ll send a telegram. Last word from Ponyville was, this is Sweet Apple Acres’ best cider season ever.” Applejack hadn’t been able to put off returning home to help with the harvest and pressing any longer, and Moondancer had taken over for her as lead flight director.

“I’ll bet! If it’s all like the first pressing!” Rainbow Dash said. “And tell her to save me a barrel. I’ll pay for it out of my share of that milestone prize check!”

“RAINBOW DASH!!”

“Comms discipline, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash replied primly.

Many more exasperated horse noises resulted.





“Okay, Thirteen,” Twilight Sparkle said, after glancing over at Flight Director Moondancer for confirmation, “we show you at thirty-four percent fuel remaining. You are go for suborbital flight at seven kilometers altitude, with an abort level of twenty-seven percent fuel. Repeat, go for suborbital flight, abort at twenty-seven percent.”

“Amicitas copies, Baltimare.”

Joking and silliness time was over. This was the final test of the mission: determining how effective Amicitas might be on a moon landing approach, in case something happened to make the lander unusable or if the lander required a rescue. Rainbow Dash would have to watch fuel levels and altitude constantly, giving regular call-outs all the while. And the danger of a malfunction- which would result in Amicitas crashing onto the surface at near-orbital velocities- made this maneuver the third most dangerous part of the entire mission.(460)

“Baltimare, Amicitas,” Rainbow Dash’s voice called. On the telepresence projection, her face under the headset showed serious, even grim. “Coming up on periapsis now. Adjusting attitude for suborbital trajectory insertion.”

On the screen, the projection of Amicitas above the moon’s surface pivoted end over end, settling down with the three main engine bells pointing ahead of it. 

“Roger, Thirteen, looking good,” Twilight called out. “Initiate burn in your own time.”

“Amicitas copies.” On the screen, Twilight noticed her taking a couple of deep breaths. The pegasus’s jaw set even more firmly. “Initiating burn in three, two, one, mark!”

Plasma plumes lit up in front of the engine bells on Mission Control’s projection.

“Twenty-five percent throttle… raising to thirty percent… holding at thirty percent,” Rainbow Dash called out. “Apoapsis at twenty kilometers… fifteen… thirty-three percent fuel…”

“Trajectory looks good, Flight,” Lemon Hearts said. 

“Apo-peri flip,” Rainbow Dash announced as what had been the apoapsis on the orbital projection descended below Amicitas’s current altitude on the other side of the moon. “And… negative periapsis! Amicitas is now suborbital at nine point eight kilometers and descending! Thirty-one percent fuel remaining!”

“We see it, Thirteen,” Twilight said. “Good work.”

“Baltimare, if I had just a little more fuel, I could land this thing,” Rainbow Dash continued. “I know I could! Or if we had the magic thrusters up here! Maybe if they were, oh, twenty percent more efficient, I could land on the tail and level off on maneuvering thrusters! I know it, Twilight!”

“Another time, Dash,” Twilight replied. “We show you thirty percent fuel at nine point five kilometers. Velocity check?”

“Stand by… velocity at-“ Rainbow Dash’s eyes flickered on the screen. “Baltimare, I may have a problem,” she said. “Aborting maneuver, returning to orbit.”

“Flight, EECOM,” Minuette called from her station. “I’m showing red light on fuel pressure, and fuel levels are dropping faster than oxidizer.”

“What?” Twilight shouted. “Rainbow- Thirteen, we’re reading loss of pressure in main engine fuel system!”

“Yeah, I see it too,” Rainbow said. On the screen, Amicitas had almost finished flipping back over, the exhaust plumes a little larger than before. “Ask if there’s any chance of me doing a direct trans-Equus burn from here.”

Twilight looked at Lemon Hearts. 

“What? I don’t know!” Lemon Hearts shouted without being asked. “I don’t see how! She’s in totally the wrong part of her orbit for a one-burn-to-Equus! It’ll take me time to feed the numbers into the computer and figure something out!”

“From where I sit,” Minuette added, “she doesn’t have the time. Fuel level twenty-three percent and dropping.”

“And she’s still suborbital!” Lemon Hearts finished.

“Shoot!” Twilight cursed. “Thirteen, Baltimare, negative on return to Equus. Just get an orbit back and shut down engines.”

“Negative, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash shot back angrily. “You designed this thing! You know I can’t re-light the engines without pressure in the fuel system! I burn now, or I’m stuck up here!” 

“I know, but the trajectory just isn’t there!” Twilight answered back. “If we’re going to get you down, we need to save fuel if we can! Go to full power and burn back to orbit now, then shut down and we’ll work the problem!”

“Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash growled, “I am at full power!” For the first time the determined look in her eyes began to show hints of fear.

“Loss of fuel pressure is affecting performance,” Minuette said. “It’s dropping off like a- whoa!”

In the inset of the telepresence screen that showed Rainbow Dash’s face, the lighting went red.

“Main life support just scrammed!” Minuette continued. “Combustibles in the return air flow! Fuel is leaking inside the spacecraft!”

“Shoot!!” Twilight said again. “The pressure seal must have failed in the refueling system. Thirteen, seal off the bridge and suit up immediately! Fuel inside the spacecraft!”

“Negative,” Dash replied, her face going iron again. “Not enough time. SAS on prograde.” She hit a switch, then slapped her flight couch restraints and floated out of view, and for half a minute the screen showed an empty seat. Amicitas remained on course, burning straight ahead, without its pilot.

“Fuel down to ten percent,” Minuette mentioned into the silence.

“Altitude ten point two kilometers and rising,” Lemon Hearts called out. “New projected apoapsis of twenty-two kilometers and rising. Still suborbital.”

Twilight Sparkle ground her teeth. “Come on, Dash,” she muttered.

Then, on the screen, Dash dropped into her seat again, slinging herself into the restraints and shoving the buckles together. “All right,” she announced, “I’ve closed the hatch to the midsection and isolated the bridge’s life support.” Her eyes made a single sweep of her console. “Six percent fuel remaining,” she said. “Reorienting to burn for the horizon. I should be able to circularize orbit with maneuvering thrusters.”

“Confirm that, Trajectory,” Moondancer called from the flight director podium.

“Roger, Flight.” Lemon Hearts looked down at her console, then shouted, “Periapsis! Less than a kilometer! It’s still showing impact with a couple of ridges, but-“

On the projector, the last feeble hints of exhaust from Amicitas’s engine bells flared out.

“Burnout!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Altitude twelve kilometers and rising. Will begin maneuvering thruster burn at twenty kilometers.”

“That should be good enough,” Lemon Hearts answered. 

“Life support restored, bridge only,” Minuette reported. 

Twilight Sparkle breathed out a sigh of relief, but only for a moment. “Thirteen, Baltimare,” she said quietly.

“Go, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash said, her face still grim as ever. 

“You’ve got a few minutes before you reach your new apopasis,” Twilight Sparkle said. “I’d like you to go ahead and suit up now. Once you’re done with your maneuvering thruster burn, we’re going to have to shut down life support and vent the ship to clear the fuel vapors.”

“Roger,” Rainbow Dash said, not moving from her seat.

Twilight watched for a moment, then asked, “Thirteen, is something wrong?”

“Remember what I told you before, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked, tone no longer hard and firm. 

“Um… yes?”

“I just want to say… I’m really glad you’re not up here with me right now,” Rainbow Dash said. Her voice cracked as she added, “Now get me down, please?”

“We will, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight Sparkle said. “I promise.”

And a quarter of a million miles away from Cape  Friendship, the all-but-dead Amicitas drifted around the moon, hanging.



Footnote:

(460) Launch being the second most dangerous, and the aerobraking and re-entry of the less-than-stable aircraft being the most dangerous by a mile.