Wes, as his friends called him, stepped off the train, looking around the pleasant little station before walking to a map of the town. "Let's see, I need to hit the library, stay away from Cake's, and also hit Town Hall to get the local building permits..." he muttered to himself, scanning the map over and picking out the locations of his stops. "Might also want to hit Carousel Boutique for an aesthetics consult." And that's where he started towards, ignoring everything not immediately in his path, and somehow avoiding a certain pink earth pony.
He skidded to a stop in front of a round multilevel building, one that employed various shades of purple and pink with some white, all in a tasteful manner. The sign above was a ponequinn run through with a twirling rod, much like a carosel horse. "This must be the place..." The grey colt sighed, barely winded by the run, and he stepped towards the door, pushing it open with a jingle from the bell overhead.
~~~
Rarity's eyes widened at the bluprints a strange Earth pony engineer lay before her about five minutes later. "I need an aesthetics consult. Remember, weight is a huge issue with this." he said, his grey coat shuddering as he tried to cover his awkwardness.
"Of course! I must say, I have never worked on something quite so... large before." She looked up, her horn glowing a light blue as several small bits of wood gathered over the blueprints, forming a miniature model of the ship, minus decks, outer hull, and engines. "How big did you say this was?"
"Let's just say Ghastly Gorge may be a no fly zone for a while. We're building her braced against the walls." The engineer smiled.
"Exact dimensions, darling." The white unicorn looked at the bluprint, and then at the model she was constructing, scrapping it for something larger, easier to examine.
"Five hundred and fifty trots long, by two hundred by sixty. Five decks, crew of fifteen." The engineer pointed out the dimensions in the bottom corner. "This may be a somewhat all-consuming project, but there is no tangible deadline, yet. I do have the funding from Canterlot to build this, and repay you for missed opportunities from the project. The structural base, however, is finalized, as is the build process. You will have to work around it."
"I am a dressmaker, Mister Quill. I have to work around wings, horns, and sometimes both. One space ship will be a challenge, yes, but I can see why you would want it looking its best. You say this is the first?"
"Princess Luna certainly thinks so, Miss Rarity."
"Well, first off, if weight is such an issue, you are using far too many engines. Seven? Four hover engines and three main drives, it appears." Rarity's model was starting to take shape.
"Ah, yes, ma'am. What would you do?"
"Well, my first thought is to pull two of your drive engines and all of your hover engines out, placing those two drive engines on wings, much like a pegasus, so that they can pivot and act as the hover engines."
"In that case, I may want to pull all of my engines and mount four on a rotating bracket, like so." Wesley grabbed a sheet of paper and a pencil and quickly drew up the idea. "Independent joints for each engine, so that they can compensate for winds, along with landing gear mounted to each engine's cowling."
"No, no, no, that will not do at all. This ship should be a thing of beauty, not of hard lines and strict engineering guidelines. One fixed hover engine at the rear, one fixed main engine at the back, two pivoting engines near the front, and the bridge should be after a graceful neck. I can build a shield spell to protect it when it re enters the atmosphere."
"Wait, how did you know about reentry?" Wes asked, cocking his head. It should have been obvious to him, as almost everyone in Canterlot knew about the pegasus who could travel faster than sound.
"Rainbow Dash once flew too high. Poor thing blacked out for lack of air. Coming down, she managed to burn her mane. Fortunately, she woke up before she could hit anything." The unicorn cocked her head in return. "Oh, you are not from here, am I correct?"
"Yes, you are. Still, a shield would be a good idea, but I think I shall see Twilight Sparkle about that. And the device powering those engines. I do believe we can work with your redesign, but have a preliminary model to me soon. I will draw up new blueprints, and once we have the site scouted, we can start construction. Would you happen to know where Miss Sparkle is?"
"Check the library, darling." Her voice was barely audible as she carried the blueprints and her model away, mumbling something about serious design flaws.