Following the first successful failure, two more attempts were made to complete a full space mission using magic power once in orbit. They were both successful, applying the lessons from the first disaster. One applied magic braking much earlier in the mission to successfully enter a stable lunar orbit, while the other, for the sake of completeness, used the engines to slow down in a traditional manner. Safe landings followed at the moonbase, before the shuttle was connected to the mag-ramp and refuelled for the return flight. The mag-ramp used magnetic acceleration to shoot the craft into the heavens on a ballistic trajectory, before it engaged its own engines for an extra boost to orbit. The same principles of magic acceleration were then applied to get both shuttles back to Equis.
While these flights were going on, feverish work was underway on another project, much larger and infinitely more complex, which had come into being mere days after Celestia first learned of the gamma ray burst. This was Project Rebirth.
Some argued the name was too grandiose, too depressing, too prophetic, too religious, not religious enough. It should be Project Alicorn, or Project Salvation, or Project Solaris, or something less provocative and more secretive, like Project X. Everypony who knew of it had their own opinions on the name, but they all had the same fervent, infinite desire to see it success. Project Rebirth would be the saviour of ponykind, or it would be an ignominious and silent failure. There was nothing in between.
In factories with Equestrian government contracts all across the land, mysterious orders began to come in for components. Aluminium, steel, titanium, copper (lots and lots of copper). Producers of rocket fuel were ordered to double their output. The government would pay. Price no object. Subsidies if you needed to expand your production capacity or buy new tools. Microchips galore, circuit boards, oxygen cylinders, carbon dioxide scrubbers, engine parts, radars. The rumours circulated among the business owning community, stock market speculators and investors. Equestria was preparing for something. Something big. It had to be a war.
The only other nation on the planet that was not under the banner of Equestria as a satellite state or ally was the Kingdom of Griffonia, proudly, even fiercely, independent, never bowing to the Sun and Moon even when they were all freed from Discord's chaotic clutches by the Princesses thousands of years ago. Today, Griffonia was a rival power to Equestria in most senses, though their relationship was not hostile so much as merely that between two nations on a roughly equal footing, who kept each other in check. There had not been a war with Griffonia for one hundred and eighty years, and even that had been a border skirmish. With both sides now possessing nuclear weaponry, that status quo seemed unlikely to change any time soon, but now speculators and internet chatter could see no other likely reason for such a big increase in Equestrian government spending on commodities. Everything they wanted was something which would be needed in a war- circuit boards and microchips for smart weaponry, missiles and computers; copper for electrical circuits in tanks, planes and ships; engine parts and radars for obvious reasons. What else could they possibly want them for?
To assuage doubt and forestall any possible moves toward an actual war, shortly after the second shuttle flight went up, Princess Celestia had contacted King Grissom of the Griffons, in a private conference call, to inform him that she had a matter of the utmost importance, and could she meet with him face to face?
The King, intrigued by her tone, agreed, and two days later they had met in the Grand Palace of Griffonstone. There, Celestia had laid out the facts to the King. Everything she knew about what was to come, she relayed to him. There could be no scientific proof offered, save for the fact that astronomers had been keeping watch on Sigma-225b for decades and had seen that it was a star in the late stages of life and a definite candidate for a supernova at some point in the very near future. There was no evidence of any impending catastrophe directed toward Equis. The only proof was Celestia's solemn word, the things she had seen deep within her mind. The things she knew beyond a doubt, but the things nobody else would be able to see until it was too late.
Grissom laughed at her
She pleaded with the King. Combine your resources with ours. Save your species.
He refused, claimed she was trying to be some kind of messianic figure not only to ponies, but now attempting to spread her claims to divinity over other species as well.
"Griffonia will never bow to your absurdities!" he informed her. "A thinly veiled attempt at a power play, Princess, nothing more. Your babble is meaningless. You said it yourself. Science cannot detect this event, not now, not until ten years in the future. Yet you expect me to believe your visions and fall in line behind you?"
"Not behind me, Your Majesty. Beside me. Griffons and ponies, together," Celestia had replied, as the grey-maned old King sat upon his throne with a look of disdain. "We must work together. If we do not, then there will be no salvation for Griffonia, for your kind."
"You speak as though you rule over us already!" he scoffed. "You speak like a false goddess. Well, you are not the goddess of Griffons!"
"But you are their King!" she had cried despairingly. "I am offering you a chance to preserve the lineage and the future of your entire species. We have a plan, that plan is in motion, but if you refuse to take part in it..."
"Plans. Pah! Waste your time and energy on this vision of yours," he waved her away with a dismissive talon. "Act like the seers and so-called wise ones of the past, stumbling in the dark, trying to interpret dreams as reality instead of driving your own path into the future. Griffonia will play no part in whatever charade you are attempting here, Princess. If you are building up your forces for war, be warned that we will match you step for step."
"There will be no war, Your Majesty. Not unless you instigate it," Celestia assured him. "I will offer you one final chance. Equal partners in our project. The only chance you will have of saving your species from extinction."
"Nonsense!" Grissom roared. "Try as you might, you cannot predict the future. You are wasting your time with a fiction, like the wizard who imagined he could fly. Do you know the story? He dreamed of flight, some spell that would carry him aloft without wings. He built a tower, hurled himself from it, chasing that dream. It took his slaves two days to hose the stones where he landed clean of his blood."
With that cautionary tale ringing in her ears, Celestia had departed the palace. Her attempt at diplomacy had failed. If the Griffon Kingdom would not help preserve its own genetic and cultural lineage, then so be it. But she would not let that race, however stubborn and antagonistic they might be, go extinct. If it could not be done through official channels, it would have to be done on the quiet, behind the scenes of Project Rebirth.
The ESEA assembly complex near Baltimare was a vast, sprawling city of warehouses, hangars, administration buildings and rail lines. From here, every space rocket ever launched would be transported, either in pieces or as one whole, to the launch site at New Zebrica. In the past two years, a huge expansion had taken place, with contractors working around the clock to open four new hangar and a new berth at the small port which served it, as well as a number of new outbuildings and workshops. The frequency of launches from New Zebrica had ballooned, from approximately two shuttles per month to two or even three per week. This, naturally, had drawn great interest from locals, space reporters, news commentators and, of course, Griffonian spies. What were the ESEA doing with all those extra flights?
More interestingly, at least to the Griffons, what was going on at Ponyburg Airbase? This was the Equestrian Air & Space Corps' main launch site, out in the western deserts. Here, too, the frequency of rockets ascending to orbit had increased. In addition, while most military launches from Ponyburg took a northern trajectory, toward the pole, for deployment of satellites, most of these flights were arcing away to the southwest, toward an inclined orbit, offset by about 30 degrees from the equator and following a similar trajectory to those from New Zebrica.
Theories abounded, but most space nerds, and the Griffonian Missile Corps, the military formation responsible for nuclear and space operations, agreed, that the Equestrians were building something up there.
The only question was what?
A space station was the first logical answer, but why? The ESEA already operated three, sometimes staffed with all-pony crews, and sometimes with a mixture, including Zebras and even, oddly, Griffons. The one thing Griffonia lacked was a true space programme of its own. They launched satellites, yes, but no crewed mission had ever flown from a Griffon launch pad. Griffons living in Equestria who wanted to go through the training, however, could fly on board an ESEA shuttle or capsule. A dozen had done so, and about fifty Zebras, but the vast majority of Equinauts were ponies. Interestingly enough, there had not been a non-pony Equinaut for the past year. A coincidence? Or something more sinister?
The Griffonian Missile Corps worried that it was not a space station the ESEA was building, but a battle station, an orbital weapons platform beyond the reach of ground-based weaponry, even, potentially, beyond the range of Griffon nuclear missiles, or perhaps equipped with defences to intercept them. Whether the platform was to be used for bombarding ground targets or merely as a sophisticated missile defence system, it would change the balance of power on Equis, for it could allow Equestria to negate the Griffon's nuclear arsenal, either by countering it or by blasting it to ash from orbit. The inclination and positioning of the orbit made the Griffons suspicious, because it was out of reach of the all-seeing eye of their ground-based telescopes, as whatever was up there never crossed into Griffonian territory (Griffonia was a geographically small, compact nation, though very powerful militarily and economically). Indeed it never came anywhere near the border, staying well clear thanks to its canted orbit. It looked very much like the ponies were trying to hide the construction of something that could be a potential weapon or countermeasure, built out of sight and then moved via inclination and velocity changes into a new orbit where it could be brought into action.
The reality was something altogether different. But only a select group of individuals knew anything of the true nature of the project. Something was being built, but it was a tool of survival, not destruction.