While camping out in the mountains, Luna and Twilight enjoy a night relaxing under the stars, studying physics, and throwing rocks about.
Because every pony princess should learn how to raise a moon of her own.
Chapters (1)
- Member Since 28th Oct, 2012
- offline last seen 6 hours ago
Pineta
Particle Physics and Pony Fiction Experimentalist
Pineta
Joined 28th Oct, 2012 ·
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That was both informative and cute.
Cute. I liked that bit about braiding the tail. That was a really nice touch.
img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121223051816/mlp/images/thumb/1/10/Applejack_Shooting_Stars_S3E08.png/640px-Applejack_Shooting_Stars_S3E08.png
I'm slightly worried they weren't worried about accidentally braining somebody if Twi didn't managed to give the rocks enough speed.
Also, nice reason at why Luna and Celestia have to move the celetial bodies manually.
Freaking Bureaucrats
Alternate ending:
Twilight continued staring at the sky with a big grin. “What will happen to them now?”
Luna shrugged. “They will keep on orbiting. That high, there is no drag from air resistance to return the rocks to Equestria.”
"That was cool!" Twilight said. "Let's launch more!"
* * *
A thousand years later
The first Equestrian space mission had just cleared the atmosphere. Over the radio, Apollo Pioneer could hear the ecstatic cheering from Mission Control.
The radio crackled to life with Princess Twilight Sparkle's voice. "Congratulations, my little ponies! This is truly a momentous time in Equestrian history."
"Thank you, Princess," Apollo said — then his attention was drawn by a glint of light off to the right side of the window that he could have sworn he hadn't seen a moment ago. He squinted. "Hey, is that a piece of —"
* * *
And that's why there are no ponies in space.
*Grins* Very cool, you always do such excellent intelligent and educational fics.
They have actual magic, and still had to use mirrors.
And I agree with AppleTank: Freaking Bureaucrats.
If Cheerilee's any indication, ponies teach orbital mechanics in elementary school. Probably a matter of some practical interest given the princesses.
I really like the reason for Luna having to tweak the moon's orbit. The only thing worse than a bureaucrat who knows nothing about what he's administrating is that same bureaucrat thinking he's an artist.
In all, some wonderful Twiluna friendshipping with a tasty dash of science. Thank you for it.
I just imagined Luna playing Kerbal Space Program. And it was totally awesome.
4789058
When Luna was young she didn't understand how orbit worked. This frustrated her because was unable to control the moon as well as her sister could control the sun. Eventually she snapped and turned into Nightmare Moon.
During the first century of her banishment, strange, plant-like creatures crashed into her moon and stabbed it with a flag. Still filled with rage, she trekked for miles so that she could destroy the defilers, but was overcome with compassion when she saw the euphoria on the little alien's face. It identified itself as Jebediah of the Kerbal race (though it took some time to decipher its nonsensical language).
With his means of transportation destroyed in the crash, his 'rocket' as he called it, Jeb had no way to leave the moon. With little else to do, the two spent centuries discussing the cosmos (and visiting interesting rock formations). Jeb told her of the numberless worlds he had visited. From the violet seas of Eve to the choking emerald clouds of Jool to the minty freshness of Minmus, she was filled with wonder. But, like all good things, it could not last.
A day came when the two were journeying to the north of the moon in search of an elusive magic boulder that they had seen fly high overhead on occasion. While normally careful in their travels, the two had become lax over the centuries, and so it is no surprise that calamity claimed them. As they drew near their destination Jeb, ever fearless, stepped upon a crack. Now this was no mere crack in the substrate. No, this crack, perfect in its straightness, represented a fissure in the nature of space itself. From this crack came a mighty tentacle, visible only the the princess' magical sight, that in an instant struck the kerbal. In a heartbeat he was accelerated to several times the speed of light, spacetime itself warping to accommodate the Kraken's fury.
With her only friend in her prison taken from her, Luna's fury overwhelmed her and she reverted to Nightmare Moon. She swore to destroy her first true friend's assailant. Steeling her resolve, she stepped upon the crack to summon the beast. For decades the two fought, and at last the kraken was struck down by her mighty power. As she gazed upon her foe's broken form sorrow invaded her heart in memory of her lost Kerbal friend. Unable the deal with the heartache, she launched the corpse into the stars, hoping that someday Jeb's kind would come across the body. In years the corpse would be captured by the planet Jool before coming to its final resting place on the rocky surface of Bop.
Thanks for all your kind comments
4786188
Pony space flight will have to wait until they can teleport direct to high earth orbit
4786169 4788959
It's amazing the number of failures of logic which can be explained by meddling bureaucrats
4789058
I first taught myself orbital mechanics playing on Frontier Elite - that was some years ago.
Relax and think about the Crystal Empire.*
Seriously, this is another masterpiece.
* The Crystal Empire is really a citystate. I hypothesize that its current name come from when King Sombra used his mindcontrolmagic for conquering the city and proclaiming himself king. He probably changed the name to Crystal Empire and started conuring its neighbors, which did not go unnoticed by the Diarchy of Equestria.
Within a century of battling King Sombra and his mental magic, Princess Luna gave into jealousy and became the Mare-In-The-Moon NightMareMoon. I doubt that this is a coincidence.
When Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Royal Consort Prince Shining Armor finish their marital duties, they should change the name from Crystal Empire to CrystalHeartPrincessipality or the like. I am certain that their subjects want to forget about the reign of King Sombra and do not want to keep using the name for their city he chose.
It is very hard to launch things. I do not know about Equus, but on Tellus, one must get objects 200 kilometers above the surface and moving at 8 kilometers per second for achieving orbit. For launching 40 tons of cargo (1 DescentStage, 1 AscentStage, 1 CommandModule, 1 ServiceModule, and 3 Asronauts) to Luna (our moon —— not the Princess) required 3,000 tons of fuel.
This story even touches on the physics of vision:
With their large eyes, ponies have larger pupils which increases both lightgathering for lowlight vision and visual acuity. Their larger eyes can fit more cones and rods on their retinas, thus also increasing visual acuity. I always imagined the ponies as pentachromates with cones for Near Ultra Violet, Blue, Green, Red, and Near InfraRed.
As always, ponies plus physics equals wonderful.
Double limestone all the way across the sky~
This question doesn't seem to make much sense as you already mentioned that Twilight has done that herself, so she must at least kinda know.
4786053 I know right, the tail braiding was sooo adorable.
4793423
Like any clever student, Twilight isn't afraid to ask the teacher silly questions
And now explain how the moon's gravitation isn't destroying the ecosystem of the planet and how Luna can move 73.490.000.000.000.000.000 tons.
The only problem is there isn't enough of it. Looking forward to more.
I love the way you mixed in magic with the science, well done on that by the way - it also seem to check out
And for the rest of you there is a reason they haven't shown any other planets in the equestrian sky (they exploded them by screwing with solar mechanics (or in Kerbal space program - hyper edit))
Story full of awws
i loved it
A nice little story.
The easiest way to turn me away from a story:
Mistakes in the description. You typed "and" twice in a row.
I'll read it anyway, but that's probably my biggest pet peeve.
4806000
Oops - thanks for pointing that out
It's a nice little story - combining friendship and physics with a dash of astronomy and respect for the night. Plus complaining about nobles, which always scores points with me.
Nice work!
4790292 I wonder... How much fun it would be if the royal sisters got so tired of the nobles shit that they ended up going fuckyouimdone, letting the orbits return to their natural state.
and sending every noble that complains to the moon after asking a simple question...
Do you like... Bananas?
Finally, some believable headcanon on the sun/moon issue in Equestria. ^_^
Cute story, too! Makes we want to start up Kerbal Space Program.
Exerting an exact amount of force to achieve orbit on a single 500-600 second burn is pretty tricky. Also, wouldn't the rocks have to be about the size of a small house to be easily spotted from the ground?
4808510
Tricky - yes - even to super-talented pony princesses, with the power to manipulate the speed of flying objects to considerable precision. But Luna has had hundreds of years of practice. Small satellites would not be visible to us humans, but to observers with eyes the size of teacups, they should be easily spotted, especially if polished to have a mirror-like surface.
I wonder what would happen if one night Luna just said, "F
it. Let the moon do what it wants." Eventually the bureaucratic outcry would die down, right? 
4786188
2,001 words.
Heh.
4827047
Your laws of physics pale before the indomitable solidity of bureaucracy!
4793999
Luna: "Do you even lift, bro?" *flexes horn*
5410508
Finally someone noticed
4791879
That's a really good point. I think I'd postulate that Pegasi almost have to have this kind of vision for perfect weather control.
Unicorns would likely have eyesight with extremely high resolution and depth of field for superb accuracy in manipulating objects and spell targeting.
Earth ponies would have to be able to see very different things, probably limiting their sight to near-infrared to green to make room for all the other receptors.
Now as an Alicorn... uh, wow. You'll need that larger cranium for image processing alone. Twilight probably didn't dare to open her eyes for the first week after transformation :)
Ah, ponies and science. The possibilities for theorizing are limitless.
5580387
Without red-sensitive cones, MacIntoshes and Granny Smiths look identical. Since Apple Jack and Apple Bloom can tell their brother and Grand Mother apart, they probably have red-sensitive cones.
Seriously, we Old-World Monkeys probably reevolved the red-sensitive cones so that we can tell whether fruit is ripe or not. Here is the evolutionary history of our color vision:
Our fishy ancestors had multiple cone-types 500 million years ago.
All tetrapods seem to be descended from a tetrachromate about 400 million years ago.
During the mesozoic, our nocturnal ancestors lost all but 2 cone-types.
About 40 million years ago, a gene-duplication made 2 copies of a photosensitive pigment in Old-world Monkeys, with 1 copy evolving into our red-sensitive pigment, and the other copy evolving into our green-sensitive pigment.
We monkeys are trichromates, but our equines are only dichromates. Most of our scaly, feather, and wet-skinned friends are tetrachromates, but some of our feathered friends, such as pigeons are pentachromates.
I imagine the ponies as having pentachromatic vision and linearly polarized lenses like any of the dinosaurs have (sea-birds have linearly polarized lenses for reducing glare from light reflecting from the water and pigeons are pentachromates).
Cute
Now just bounce beams of magic light off your super-shiny orbiting rocks, and you've got long-distance communication. Heck, combine some rubies and such the right way and even a non-unicorn could bounce light beams off it to send long-distance messages... Don't forget your safety filter goggles when playing around with that stuff though, of course.
Awesome story!