Magic Inc. Part 4
The area Nixon was led to was long and relatively narrow, an afterthought space that may well have been for utilities. It had been cleaned up, and a table at one end had a number of objects on, such as a bowling ball, a foot high statue of a gnome, a cardboard shoe box, and several others. At their end, a smaller table had a sealed case, with an airman standing guard over it. Dyson unlocked and opened the case to reveal the contents.
It looked like a large flashlight that had extra controls. At one end of the foot long cylinder, a cut-out showed the presence of a D-cell battery-sized thaumic accumulator that glowed brightly with a full charge, and near the other end, in front of the obvious grip, there were two push buttons flanking a rocker switch, currently in a neutral position. If you held the grip, it was clear you could reach the controls with your outstretched thumb. There was also a large, unfriendly arrow painted on it, pointing away from the accumulator.
"This is one of our most sophisticated designs so far, we've only had it working a few weeks. Mr President, please pick it up, arrow pointing away from you."
"It won't give me a shock or anything?" Nixon asked, slightly wary of the mysterious device.
"No shock, but maybe a surprise." Dyson stated, smiling. Nixon picked it up, finding it solid but no heavier than a similar sized flashlight. Dyson was clearly going for a big reveal. While Nixon normally had little time for mysteries, he was willing in this case to allow Dyson his moment of theatre.
"Please press and hold down the left button sir." Nixon did so, and a small bright circle of blue light appeared on the far wall, in line with the axis of the device.
"Nice flashlight" Nixon quipped.
That got a chuckle from the group, and Dyson replied, "A coherent beam of monochromatic light from a thaumic light emitter, effectively a low power laser, but that is just the targetting system. Move the light to focus on one of the objects, and release the button."
Nixon did so, choosing the bowling ball. As he released the button, the circle of light disappeared, replaced by a glowing light blue aura that enveloped the ball. A similar aura flickered and played around the end of the projector. He recognised the effect, if not the colour, this was a similar aura to the one that had enveloped the objects Luna had lifted in view of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 video cameras.
He slowly moved the end of the projector upwards, and with no more resistance than when it was projecting the light spot, it rose, and the bowling ball rose with it. "Blackstone eat your heart out!"
As Nixon moved the projector back and forth, the bowling ball followed, though he noticed it would take a few seconds to catch up if he swung the device too quickly. "What does the middle one do?"
"It moves the object held towards or away from you." Dyson explained. "It's applying an accelerating force, so you need to push the near side to start it moving towards you and the far side to slow it down or start it moving away. Use short presses at first, and don't worry about it hitting you, there's a hard stop for the minimum distance between the projector and the object. That was actually one of the most complex factors to include."
Nixon somewhat gingerly followed the instructions, giving a brief press of the half of the rocker switch nearest him, and seeing the bowling ball start floating towards him, speeding up until he released the rocker. He quickly pressed the other end and the ball slowed down and started to drift away. It didn't take long to get the hang of the controller. He played with it for a few moments, then asked, "So how do I let go?"
"The right hand button releases the grip. Try to place the ball back on the table first."
It only took a moment to do what Dyson asked, and the bowling ball gave a thunk as the glow vanished and it dropped the last fraction of an inch onto the table.
"That's one heck of a party trick!" Nixon exclaimed, putting the device down. "How much can it lift?"
"It's rated for about 30 pounds of force, and configured to apply a baseline upwards force that just counters the downwards force of gravity. The remaining force is applied to keep the target in line with the projector axis, or in the case of movement along the axis, applying the force towards or away as the rocker switch is pressed."
"So good for getting a box of files from off a high shelf without a ladder, but I'm sure you have other ideas?"
"This is obviously just a prototype, and the force is limited. In theory, you could move far larger objects, at greater distances and speeds. Raise the force by a factor of 10, and it becomes and ideal search and rescue tool. Pick a man from the ocean or a cliff face where a rescue helicopter can't approach, lift away obstructions without having to risk getting caught under them, the possibilities are endless. Or in space, moving objects around outside a spacecraft, satelites or even other astronauts. Scale it up further and you have a classic sci-fi tractor beam; move tons of cargo around, or lift entire vehicles out of a hazard."
Dyson made sure the projector was secured back in the case, and led Nixon and the others away, back past the workshops they'd first visited. Nixon noted with mild amusement that the workshop door now had the hand drawn sign with illuminated warning text stuck on it. They moved to a different entrance to the one from the astronaut quarters, and back towards the communications room. Dyson continued to talk as they walked.
"The only things the current design can't do is rotate the object it's holding, or move itself. The first is just another set of controls to be able to apply differential forces to points on the surface, a step up in complexity, but easily developed once we have Luna here full time. However, the other requires a whole new base arithmantic form, and a far more complex one. In layman's terms, for conventional telekinesis all distances and the forces are calculated with respect to an origin point, the projector. If the projector itself is the thing that's moving, the formulas don't work, though we have a partial work-around for that. Which is good, as an engine built using this principle could change the way we consider space travel."
Dyson paused for a second.
"You may have noticed something about the effect, the lack of reaction force. You didn't feel the weight of the bowling ball the way you would have if it was simply on a long stick. Whether it's the kick of a shotgun against your shoulder when you fire a bullet, or the exhaust of a rocket engine pushing out in one direction and driving the rocket in the other, forces and momentum must balance. The law of conservation of momentum and Newton's Third Law. Except that thaumic telekinesis treats those laws with contempt, it might as well be putting on a mask and using a six shooter to hold up Newton and steal his apples.
"If we could build a self-propelled engine using this principle, the technical term is a reactionless drive, it would be the holy grail of spacecraft design. All spacecraft are limited in potential targets they can reach by the amount of propellant they carry. The key is not so much distance as velocity, known as delta-v. You need around four and a half miles a second to achive a stable orbit around Earth, and almost seven to reach the Moon. And that doesn't count propellant for slowing down and landing, or getting back. There's a reason the Saturn V is 3000 plus tons, mostly fuel.
"But a reactionless drive could go anywhere, as long as it had enough thrust to lift itself against the gravity it encounters, and an adequate power supply. The moon, Mars, the outer planets, even to other stars, and if it had enough energy to continuously accelerate half way and decelerate the rest of the way, it would take far less time than a normal rocket using a minimum energy orbit to conserve propellant. That six month journey to Mars we were discussing earlier? With a 1 G drive, that is a drive that could accelerate a spacecraft at 32 feet per second every second, the trip would take around 4 days."
They reached the communications room that had earlier been the site of Luna's message, and Sagan once again let them in. More behind the scenes slight of hand had meant that a couple of workers had appeared almost immediately, carrying refreshments. Dyson waited until they left, and everyone had gotten their choice of beverage before continuing.
"We will be working with Luna to explore the idea when she arrives on Earth, but the problem is a hard one even for her. Only a few unicorns in her long experience ever learned to self levitate, the nearest thing to what we want, and none of them recorded their spell designs, at least not as far as Luna had ever been able to discover. One bright spot is that Luna herself can do it, but for her it is an innate ability, tied to her talent, not a spell effect, so she has never had to understand the arithmancy behind it.
"By comparison, conventional telekinesis is practically an innate ability for all unicorns, but because it is so universal, it has been extensively examined and deconstucted arithmantically, both to learn how to develop it most effectively, and as a gateway for unicorn spellcasters to learn arithmacy and magical theory. So it was easy for Luna to convert it to a form we could use with runesets. Whereas self-levitation is something she will have to work it out from first principles.
"We would also have to develop more compact and powerful sources of thaumic energy, which is a whole separate field we are only starting to explore. But the goal is worth it, a spacecraft that operates like an airliner, with no need to discard massive, expensive pieces of single-use hardware to operate. Cheap, reliable access to space, the moon, the entire solar system! Though for the short term we have two alternative concepts that combined could deliver most of the same benefits based on the techniques we already know how to produce, with only one relatively minor development needed."
"Is this what you were hinting at earlier when you talked about making future missions cheaper?" Nixon asked.
"Yes, in the long term the full reactionless drive will take over, but in the short term we could use a telekinetic projector with much greater range and power to launch payloads into orbit, and a pulsed reactionless drive for travel in space."
Nixon considered this. "What even is a pulsed reactionless drive?"
"Exactly what it says, rather than having a continuous thrust output, such as with a rocket engine, a Pulsed Reactionless Drive, or PRD gets pulses of thrust. It uses a separated heavy mass known as the pusher mass, accelerated by a telekinetic projector just as you moved that bowling ball. The pusher mass is free to move along the axis of the spacecraft, encased in a cage connected to the rest of the vehicle. At the front end of the cage there are shock absorbers, and the telekinetic projector.
"A cycle starts with the projector accelerating the pusher mass forward. Since there's no reaction force, the cage and spacecraft isn't pulled backwards. When it hits the shock absorbers they catch it and transfer the forward motion to the rest of the spacecraft, while rebounding the pusher mass backwards. They smooth out the impact into a gentler pulse of acceleration. The projector catches the pusher mass before it reaches the back of the cage, pulling it forward to avoid hitting the rear of the cage, and slowing the vehicle down. Then the cycle repeats.
"Since the projector is always moving a separated mass, the basic telekinetic formulae are sufficient. The result is a space drive that can reach an arbitrarily high velocity, and could be ultimately powered by solar energy through photothaumic panels. In practice, a working spacecraft would have dozens of smaller Thumper units, set up in an array around the axis of thrust, working in opposing pairs and staggered in cycle time like the pistons of a car engine. That way you would always have some units in the 'push' stage of the cycle, smoothing out the acceleration further."
"Thumper units?"
Dyson sighed, clearly realising he'd said more than he intended. "An acronym we've been using for the drive module, THaumic Unidirectional Mass Pulse Reactionless Engine, or THUMPER, though we've also been calling it 'the booststrap drive'."
"A piston driven spacecraft." Nixon summarised. "What are its limitations? You wouldn't be working towards that other version if there weren't any."
"The main one is that the acceleration of a PRD is probably going to be fairly low, on the order of one tenth G, or three feet per second squared. That would be partly to keep wear and tear on the shock absorbers to something reasonable, and partly to reduce pusher mass and power requirements, which in turn would require smaller photothaumic panels, with less mass and structural reinforcement."
Seeing Nixon's frown, Dyson continued, "But that's still a big upgrade in capability, since it could still accelerate constantly for days. Constant boost to Mars at one tenth G still only takes twelve and a half days, longer than the four days for one G, but much less than the six months a conventional rocket would. While the acceleration is much lower, the increased duration means it has more time to act. A trip to the moon would take just over eleven hours compared to the three and a half hours it would take at one G. And still means that you would no longer be restricted to the narrow time windows where the planets are in the right positions to use the minimum energy transfer orbits.
"There is also the issue that the pulsed low thrust would be less than ideal for manoeuvring. So it would still need auxiliary rocket engines for precise orbital manoeuvres or to move rapidly to avoid a collision, similar to the auxiliary motor on a sailing yacht. And of course, with the low thrust, it wouldn't be able to take off from Earth. It would have to be built in space, and stay in orbit while dedicated landers or shuttle craft actually transported people and supplies to and from the surface."
"That doesn't sound cheap." Nixon said.
"On it's own, no, using rocketry to lift components into orbit and carry crew and supplies would be very expensive, but that's where the Thaumic Orbital Projector System or TOPS comes in. It's based on the telekinetic projector we already have, but would require some development, extending the range, or rather the ability to register on a target at range, and being able to control it via electronic signals rather than manually. Scaling up the force is just a matter of using more units in parallel.
"Conceptually, it's simple enough, an array of telekinetic projectors with a range of 1300 miles. Which is a lot further than across the room, granted, but a distance that Luna was easily able to reach when she was in her full, adult form, and assures us we should be able to duplicate with thaumics. Even when she was effectively running on fumes, she could still nudge the Apollo 11 ascent module into a more stable orbit at a range of 70 miles.
"Now she has access to a way to easily replenish her own power, she will be demonstrating long range telekinesis by recovering the Apollo 12 ascent stage from lunar orbit and landing it back at Mare Cognitum. The mission team were originally going to crash land it to obtain seismic data, but held off against it being useful, as Luna could do more just using rocks. She will recharge the batteries and send it back up, and we will monitor it to collect data on the effect, to confirm that telekinesis can be managed at longer range."
"A TOPS array, based at Cape Kenedy for example, would pick up a vehicle off the launch pad and accelerate it up out of the atmosphere and into it's orbital or lunar trajectory, controlled by a computer similar to the ones at Mission Control, or on the Saturn V. A 40,000 pound thrust array could loft a nine ton spacecraft into a 450 mile high orbit of Earth at a constant acceleration of 2.2 G, or a 5 ton spacecraft into a lunar transfer orbit at 4 G, all without a launch vehicle. For comparison, the Surveyor 3 lunar probe the Apollo 12 mission visited last year was just over 1 ton in mass at launch.
"Scale it up to a super-array of ten 40,000 pound projectors, and you could launch the 50 ton Apollo spacecraft stack onto a lunar transfer trajectory, replacing the Saturn V entirely, or put 90 tons in orbit. That would be enough for a large self-contained manned outpost, a space station. It's something the Soviets are bound to try, their recent experiments in orbital docking point towards it, especially since they've lost out on the manned moon landing. There is even a candidate design under development by the Apollo Applications program, based on a refitting a Saturn third stage, and originally designed to be launched on a Saturn V."
"It still seems like something of a solution looking for problems." Nixon said, sceptically, sipping his coffee.
"It's more than that, it would be a paradigm shift in space exploration and ultilisation. Especially if you built a matching but smaller array on the moon, which would only need 40,000 pounds of thrust to return 50 ton payloads back to Earth, and only 4000 pounds thrust initially to soft land payloads for expansion. With that in place you would be able to deliver fully reusable crew and cargo vehicles, initially derived from the Apollo CSM and Payload Adaptor respectively, back and forth on a daily basis if needed. Not to mention delivering payloads to anywhere in the Earth Moon system or even on to interplanetary trajectories, all without any expendable rocket stages."
Nixon asked, "So what would it be used for, and more importantly, what would it cost?"
"There are a vast number of applications. To start with, the number of satellites in orbit, both commercial and government owned, are going to increase massively over the next decade. Communications, earth observation, even navigation satellites are all going to become something we rely on more and more, even if we are restricted to rocketry to launch them. Monitoring weather, reliable broadcast and point-to-point radio communication, navigation beacons that can't be obscured by ground or atmospheric interference, the capabilities are just too valuable.
"TOPS would allow satellites to be launched into almost any orbit, even the hard-to-reach but extremely useful geosynchronous orbits, at a fraction of the cost of a rocket. There's also the fact that because launch vehicles are so expensive, they are generally built for the mission, which means you need to plan your launch months or even years in advance. Even when you have the rocket on the pad, it can take days or even weeks to test and bring it to launch status.
"With TOPS, launches could happen within hours of having a payload ready, for example an observation satellite tasked to monitor a suddenly developing natural disaster or military situation, or a communications satellite to replace one that has failed, cutting a vital communications link. It's generally accepted that as a business sector it is going to be worth hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars annually before the decade is out, and having something like TOPS would allow the U.S.A to dominate the market, even with the smaller 40,000 lb thrust version.
"It will have an equally positive effect on future NASA deep space missions. Unmanned interplanetary probes and landers would be vastly cheaper to launch, allowing funding to be focussed on the mission space craft rather than the launch vehicle, reducing costs and delays. The proposed Grand Tour of the outer planets is just one example. While they might still need a deep space manoeuvring stage, depending on the mission, it would be far smaller and cheaper than a full multi-stage launch vehicle, especially since it could use a small PRD as a main propulsion bus.
"Of course, if you've built the infrastructure and manufacturing capability for the smaller version, expanding the array would be simple. That's when the opportunities really start to appear. It would cost little more for the large array to launch a 90 ton payload as for the smaller one to launch 9 tons. You could end up with a case where it costs more to transport the space craft from the manufacturing plant to the launch site than to launch it into orbit, or to the moon. Under those circumstances, space becomes a place for industrialisation and colonisation.
"There have been a recent study on building massive solar power satellites in space, using materials mined and refined on the moon, and launched by an electromagnetic catapult, which could be replaced by the TOPS. They would beam power down to earth as microwaves. Microgravity offers all kinds of possibilities for manufacturing of materials, pure crystals for electronics and thaumics applications, specialised chemicals and alloys that would be impossible in a gravity field. Even tourism becomes possible when the cost of building and travelling to an orbital resort hotel goes from 'significant fraction of the US GDP' to 'equivalent to building a remote ski chalet or tropical island hotel'.
"Asteroids, particularly metallic asteroids, carry vast amounts of valuable industrial metals, gold, platinum, iridium, all available and able to be smelted by a large parabolic foil reflector focussing the sun's light onto it. And of course, any mining or refining done in space no longer has any environmental impact on Earth.
"And speaking of impacts on Earth, space based telescopes are our best bet for detecting rogue asteroids that might wipe out a city, or a country. The same Pulsed Reaction Drive mining vessels that would go out to bring back materials, could fly out and divert such an asteroid to no longer hit Earth. If we could detect it soon enough, a change of a few feet per second in velocity would be sufficient to turn a hit into a miss."
"Then there's mithril. There are two ways to produce it. First, transport tons of regolith down to Earth to create artifical lunar surface to reflect light off to produce moonlight, which will only work short term as there's a non-physical component beyond just the light spectrum, and moon rock will eventually lose it's 'connection' to the moon and become useless. Second, build a production factility on, or in low orbit of the moon where there is ample moonlight as well as sunlight to power photothaumics for the quintessence needed.
"Considering the myriad uses of a frictionless, perfect thermal and electrical insulator that has no melting point, acts as a perfect reflector of all electromagnetic frequencies and particles, and can be cast into any shape needed, it would be an assured revenue stream. It could act as an 'anchor tenant' for a TOPS system on the moon, and once the double ended system was in place to send cargo and crew vehicles back and forth cheaply without rockets, or to anywhere in the Earth Moon system, American industry and ingenuity would do the rest.
"And consider, TOPS doesn't just launch vehicles, it can capture and land them too. One of the reasons the Command module is all that lands of the Apollo spacecraft is because it has to use atmospheric re-entry to shed speed, and more mass means more energy. But TOPS could engage an incoming spacecraft outside the atmosphere and slow it down to sub-orbital speeds before it even encounters atmosphere, and land the craft back on the pad it took off from, greatly improving safety and recovery time for re-use.
"Of course, the same thaumic projector array that could intercept a 5 ton vehicle incoming from the moon could also intercept a ballistic nuclear warhead on a sub-orbital trajectory and deflect it. An super-array of ten, with proper computer control, could deal with a serious attack. A super-array at Vandenburg could support space launches there, and cover the West Coast. Other stations could cover other aspects. While it wouldn't be a perfect defence, it would degrade the chances of a major attack doing damage, and act as a deterrent.
"However, I think the main focus should be on peaceful uses. The best analogy for TOPS would be the transcontinental railroad, and how it opened up the West Coast to settlement and exploitation. We talk about 'the conquest of space' and 'the final frontier' but TOPS and the bootstrap drive could actually make it a genuine frontier, not just for astronauts and scientists, but for everyone. The initial work could be done by reusable Apollo derived hardware that's being developed by the Apollo applications program, we've even come up with a reference mission architecture for it, but once TOPS is in place, aerospace companies will be developing their own reusable space vehicles."
"That's a lot of options, but it still doesn't say how much this wonder would cost." Nixon prompted. In truth he was impressed, but he didn't want to seem too taken by it. He could see some of the possibilities now they'd been explained, but how practical were they?
Dyson paused. "At this stage it's hard to say. At a very rough guess, including development and construction of the thaumic component manufacturing, I'd say the Earth end of the TOPS super-array would be between $100 and $200 million, and it could well be lower. However, since a Saturn V launch is around $185 million before payload, and even smaller launch vehicles run to several tens of millions of dollars per launch, it would recoup it's cost very quickly in a few launches. Plus you'd have the capability to build additional TOPS arrays at other locations, and photothaumic panels and accumulators for other purposes. Additional stations would cost much less on the order of $10 million each.
"The lunar end would be more expensive, mostly because of the non-reusable landers and Apollo stack that would be needed to land the initial components and astronauts to install them. The price there is likelty to be more than $400 million, but less than $600 million. Expensive, I know, but it makes every subsequent lunar mission cheap, and since it also delivers a permanent lunar base as a jumping off point for exploration and prospecting of an area four times the size of the United States, it is well worth the cost. Of course, you can build and start operating the Earth end for non-lunar missions before you ever start the lunar end."
"And what will it cost right now?" Nixon asked, "I can tell a sales pitch when I hear one."
"Actually nothing." Dyson responded. "Both the PRD and TOPS require considerable development and study before they're in any sort of state to propose as actual projects, maybe as much as a year. Myself and others have been working on them as a side project in our spare time. We need Luna to help fill in some of the gaps, and we don't know what other effects she'll show us that could impact on the idea, make it cheaper and simpler or even obsolete.
"Maybe self-propulsion is easier to work out than we think, or full levitation can make it practical for a PRD to launch a spacecraft directly from Earth. Or the acceleration from a PRD is high enough to land directly on the moon with a rocket assist, removing or reducing the need for a lunar TOPS. Maybe Luna can even produce teleportation systems or fuel tanks that are bigger on the inside than out, like the Foldbox from Heinlein's story Glory Road. We've barely begun to scratch the surface of thaumics, but the take-away is that space travel is almost certainly going to become a lot cheaper and more accessible in the near future. However, it does lead to a consideration..."
Director Gilruth, who up until now had been quiet, spoke up. "To take full advantage of these new technologies, we need to maintain our capabilities in manned spaceflight. We've anticipated that once the primary goal of the Apollo missions was completed, funding for NASA and manned spaceflight in particular would drop. It doesn't help that the Apollo programs took a very expensive route to achieving those goals, and have left us with hardware that's equally expensive to continue using and not easily adapted to many other tasks.
"To achieve going from barely being able to put a man in space to landing men on the moon in nine years required a tight focus on the essentials needed to achieve the goal. The original Von Braun ferry rocket was based around re-usable stages, and building a large outpost station in orbit to support a re-usable lunar transfer vehicle. No-one in 1960 would have thought we'd get to the moon by loading everything needed onto a massive expendable launch vehicle and launching it at the moon.
"It was, however, the right strategy for the goal. Scaling up something we knew how to do already, an expendable staged rocket, required the least time and had the fewest question marks, even if it forced us to save mass wherever possible. Likewise with the ballistic re-entry capsule. Just developing the components that were brand new took up most of the time we had. And that was with developing the components in parallel, which saved time and spread the development efforts across many states, giving it a broader base of political support at the expense of making it more... expensive.
"However, now we have to deal with the results. Luna has given us an unexpected additional boost, but the American public is unlikely to want to support many missions at hundreds of millions of dollars apiece for short duration science missions. And to be fair, we could do dozens of them and still only scratch the surface of the moon, literally, as well as in terms of the knowledge available. And Saturn V launched missions are not going to be practical for building up in-space infrastructure or industrial uses. Saturn V may be a magnificent piece of engineering, but it has no long term future, with or without thaumics.
"On the other hand, thaumics opens up new possibilities for further development and cheaper re-purposing and re-use of the other components we've spent so much to develop, such as the CSM, a highly capable and proven crew transport. It could be modified to be closer to the Direct Return design, with fold out landing legs on the Service Module, and better thermal shielding around the base. With TOPS doing the heavy lifting at both ends, no pun intended, it could go from a launch pad on Earth to the surface of the moon and back hundreds of times.
"And that's just one idea. Director Paine and I have put together some proposals for additional funding of the Apollo Applications program towards integrating thaumic technologies into Apollo hardware to enable reusability and reduction of operational costs. Also to maintain or mothball manufacturing capability for the Apollo hardware so we can still actually build the upgraded designs when we finalise how we are going to proceed.
"Manned spaceflight will eventually continue on some level, even without this investment. But if we abandon all our hard won experience and knowledge from Apollo after the current missions play out, start to build the next generation of manned hardware from scratch, even with thaumics as a force multiplier, you're unlikely to see a replacement before the end of the decade. Not least because we can't expect the same high level of funding that Apollo recieved, despite what Doctor Von Braun and some others believe.
"By comparison, if we can combine thaumics and developments of existing hardware, we can reasonably expect to have the next generation of hardware ready to deploy by the time the existing Apollo missions finish. By 1976, we could have the beginnings of a permanent industrial and commercial presence in space, an actual economy, with all the benefits that would bring to the United States economically, and culturally."
Nixon considered Director Gilruth's words. It was a pretty blatant appeal to his political legacy. If he couldn't pull a second term out of the advancements he'd already been shown, let alone what other rabbits Luna would end up pulling out of her saddlebags, he should probably go back to hanging out a shingle as a lawyer. The reference to 1976, the end of that second term, was a direct challenge. Did he want to be remembered simply as the president who completed the Apollo program, or the president who opened up a new frontier?
As president of the United States he was already a member of a very exclusive club with only 37 members. However, there were presidents and presidents. Only a handful were household names, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt... Nixon already had a shot at that level, just from overseeing the first moon landing, but in that he'd always play second place to Kennedy as the one who initiated it, and then had the lack of consideration to get assassinated, pretty much assuring a top place in the rankings, while Nixon would be left playing second fiddle as the steward of the martyred president's grand design.
He would also be the president who recovered Luna, but that was less an accomplishment, and more a necessity. Whatever wonders Luna produced, they would be her wonders, and he'd once again be simply the president who oversaw the process. But this, this could be his great work, building on Kennedy's legacy, and exceeding it. There was also the fact that it would genuinely benefit the United States, as Gilruth had stated. The parallel to the Trans-Pacific railroad was well made, new frontiers were usually highly profitable, once you could get to them.
If he was seen as opening up such a new frontier it would cement his place in that pantheon of presidents who you didn't need to look up in a textbook. Still, there was no need to go all in at this stage. He had no problem with quid pro quos, and this was even a reasonable one.
"I admit, it does sound very promising, but I'll have to look over those proposals to see how practical they are, and what is feasible given the current political climate. For example, it may be too late to make any significant alteration to the current budget proposal. Still, there are ways and means, even after the budget goes in, and you can be assured I will give this the most serious consideration if I see developments from some of the other projects you've shown me, such as the pain killer effect and the water filter.And of course the atomic bomb shield is still a priority.
"I'll need your written reports on the projects you've been working on to take back to DC. I suspect I'm going to have a series of sleepless nights as I consult with various government departments to decide what other applications of these thaumic effects you should prioritise. I'm not minimising your present efforts, indeed I'm very impressed at what you've accomplished in such a short time, and you should tell your teams that. However, some outside analysis should help to focus your efforts on the best options to deliver the greatest and most imediate benefits."
"We'll welcome the guidance if anything. We already have something of an embarrassment of riches, and remember these are just the beginner level effects Luna gave us because they were relatively simple to recreate in rune sets. Once she's down on Earth and able to work in a more hands..." Dyson puzzled for a second, "... hooves on? Horn on? direct capacity, it may be more of a matter of coming up with solutions for problems, rather than looking for problems we can solve, with our current solutions."
Sagan checked his watch and added, "Mr President, we should get back to Administration, where we can give a proper presentation on what our next steps will be. Director Paine will be there, and we should have the papers you require, and the biological samples for your diplomatic efforts ready at the end of it."
"Good, then let's go..." Nixon paused, half out of his seat, and sat back down. "Though I still want to know what security you have on those magic producing panels."
Dyson explained. "It's simple enough, the base arithmantic equation uses an experssion which fits one of a sequence of numbers. Translated into a rune set in needs the expression of that number to effectively complete the circuit. The tester device supplies such a number for the inital test, but the label has a layer of metal film which the tester encodes with one of the potential numbers, unique to each panel. It replaces the tester device, completing the rune set, and also has additional runics that turn it into a radio locator beacon that will start sending it's code with all the power of the panel when we send ot a triggering signal, with a range of hundreds of miles both ways.
"The labels are produced separately, and aren't known to be anything beyond identifiers. If a panel goes missing, we send out a coded signal for that panel, and the beacon will respond. If it's been stolen and they try to remove the label, the panel becomes nothing more than a paperweight. We can even overload the beacon and destroy the label remotely. It's an elegant solution, based on nothing more than the thaumic radio techniques Luna worked out during Apollo 11. It's not fool proof, but it should work as a stop gap, especially as none of the workers know of the additional function."
"Good, I'm glad to see you're keeping security in mind." Nixon got up once more, and the rest of the group followed.
&&&
As the gear lifted and Air Force One rose into the sky, Nixon considered what he'd seen and heard. The final meeting discussing their next steps had held no surprises. About $3 million of the special appropriation he'd signed off on would be going to build a dedicated Thaumic Research facility on the open area opposite the Lunar Recieving Laboratory. It would include confortable quarters for Luna, and the same level of security the LRL was currently under.
They intended to build out in sections, moving the existing test and manufacturing facilities across as soon as they had enough room built out, so the LRL could return to it's original purpose. He'd secured a commitment to focussing on the water filter and pain relief applications, and the parachute replacement certainly seemed promising, but beyond that, it was difficult to say what they would be working on, since Luna had barely begun to teach them.
The reports he had would form the basis of his discussions with his administration and advisors from the various Government Departments, but he already had the shape of the strategy they'd reccomend in mind. He wanted applications that could show results quickly, and potentially be distributed out at least in the U.S. without giving away any of the technology behind it. Applications what could boost the economy, or reduce expenditures would be top of the list too.
He also had a separate briefcase which would be delivered, under heavy security to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where Special Ambassador Kissinger would proceed to use the contents where they would do the most good. It was a strange world where the fate of a war hung on what were effectively toenail clippings. More than that, the possibility of further 'gifts' might well be the key to unscrewing the inscrutable. Closer relations with China would hopefully lead to opening up greater trade and cultural exchanges, beginning to break them out of their isolationist mindset.
He should get Haldeman to arrange a meeting with the Soviet Ambassador too. Or better yet, once the talks with China were more advanced, let Ambassador Dobrynin discover at least part of it, and manoeuvre him into asking for a meeting instead. Given the border clashes between the two countries, he would be concerned that a warming of relations between China and America would leave Russia out in the cold. With some finesse, he could play one off against the other, establish a balance of power with his thumb on the scales.
It was a strategy he'd already been planning for with Kissenger, but Luna gave him an opportunity to advance the timeline considerably. He'd have to do something nice for her, quite apart from the fact that keeping her happy would make it easier to get her future co-operation. He wondered just how far and how quickly she could actually help Sagan, Dyson and their teams advance this thaumics technology, especially their space travel ideas.
When he'd taken office, he'd fully intended to cut NASA budgets to the bone, specifically the Apollo program, as between the cost of the war and the rising level of inflation, America didn't have the money to spend on continuing what was essentially a vanity project, since the major objective was achieved. However, ending the war quickly would have a postive effect on inflation, as well as freeing up money for other urgent programs.
If they really could develop a much cheaper route into space, and one that would deliver actual economic benefits rather than just a few pounds of moon rock and bragging rights, he could see his way to ensuring some of that funding went to supporting their efforts. as for being the president who opened up a new frontier? He liked that idea, he liked it a lot. Especially if he could achieve it with very little personal political risk.
Now that he'd had a chance to consider it, the TOPS system's potential secondary function as an effective anti-ballistic missile system could be just as valuable, complementing the defensive shield technology. Such a thng would disrupt the current strategic doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction even more than the defensive shields, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. MAD was a good acronym, a strategy of necessity or even desperation, because of the very lack of an effective defence.
It was rooted in Games Theory and the idea that rational actors would understand that they would lose far more than they gained by starting a nuclear exchange. However, it had one glaring and fatal flaw. It assumed the actors _were_ rational. All it would take was one irrational actor, a General Ripper or on the Russian side a General Ripoff, or even an error in detection, to cause everyone a very bad day.
While TOPS could counter this, on the surface it might also increase risks by encouraging any unstable parties to act before the balance of power changed. However, it would be more useful as a tool in negotiating treaties to limit strategic weapons. The more obvious strategy was to use it as a bargaining chip, limiting it's deployment and scope to purely space launch activities in return for concessions, restoring the status quo ante.
The higher risk but higher reward strategy was to go all in, degrading the usefulness of ballistic weapons. In the context of a treaty, the US could afford to be generous in reducing their offensive strike capability, which currently had to be overwhelming to provide a credible threat, as a single strike was likely all they had to respond to any attack. It would reduce their ability to launch an offensive first strike, but that was an acceptable tradeoff considering there were very few reasons for doing so.
Trading nuclear warheads for defensive TOPS installations, and for enemy missiles and warheads which would be less effective because of TOPS, could prove superior in the long run. Fewer warheads meant fewer potential failure points on both sides, and less possible damage in the worst case scenario. Also defensive intallations were by their very nature defensive, not a threat to an opponent, only to their ability to be a threat.
There was also the financial incentive. Maintenance of the current nuclear triad had an annual cost of tens of billions of dollars, even without the costs of replacement of warheads that had decayed, or disposal of the nuclear waste from their production and decommissioning. Replacing even a part of it with installations that cost only tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build, and a lot less to maintain would be a massive benefit to future budgets.
A reduction in the threat of nuclear war, and a second future peace dividend on top of the immediate savings from ending the conflict in Vietnam, on top of the other opportunites it would create? Not only would it provide objective benefits to the United States that even the most rabid left wing Democrat couldn't gainsay, it would definitely catapult the architect of such a plan to the topmost tier of presidential fame. To join Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt... He had an amusing thought, based on the names, if he could pull this off they might need to add a fifth face on Mount Rushmore.
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11722182
HUZZAH!!!
Well, ageless, but not immortal still. Kinda like... how we get in the Marvel Universe; Some characters like Nick Fury and Black Widow, don't age externally cause of a special agent they imbibed. I hate to argue or anything and I am not one to argue cause I'm not that combative, but nothing's invincible... Unfortunately. I mean how else can Luna be defeated by her own sister and even Discord could be 1 that challenges them both on a superior level. And, if he had any clear sanity or conscience to think rationally, could've, would've, and probably should've beat them.
With this, a new chapter in EVERY aspect of human existence has been written.
Luna, Earth awaits you!
You have knocked it out of the park as always.
yay two new chapters
I don't know why. But I have the sinking feeling that Luna will get taken back to Equestria/her own universe before she is able to be brought to Earth. I really hope I'm wrong, but I'm just waiting for something to go wrong in that regard. I really want to see her on Earth. It just seems too good to be true.
Edit: bruh why all the dislikes? It's a legitimate concern. Some people I tell ya......
NIxon can give the world clean water and remove pollution.... and he is worried how to be thought of in history.......
Seperating pure fluids from contaminants?
Sewage recycling and blood dialysis.
OTEC power units were known and were effectively hyper efficint desalination that generated more power than they needed to run. Thats why Im not phased by the magical version. That, and a very intrestingly peculiar claim about the behaviour of water vapour with sheets of graphene oxide. An apature of greaer than 100%, and impervious to hydrogen.
Combine Featherfall and either the paperclip warp drive or the Ping pong space drive. rockets go straight up because they carry all their energy and so work better outside the atmosphere and so have to accelerate greater than 1g. Aircraft use the atosphere and can accelerate far slower, depending on the thrust needed for a speed. The origional Concorde prototype only had 30 thousand pounds of thrust total for a 300 thousand pound aircraft? And a large portion of the thrust is needed to overcome wing drag and lift drag. Featherfall allows smaller wings or less expansive lifting bodies and so correspondingly smaller thrust units.
Thinking of the Thumpers, cross referencing with self levitation, throwing in an obscure unit called The Confuser, and realising generally a unicorn body carries iron atoms in the blood, but more importantly microwave rotatable water in the bulk of the body gives a useable model for possible working? Depends on the scientists working on higher speed much smaller thrusters, but thats a cavity magnetron in a domestic microwave oven, which is how much thrust for a kilowat power?
If the Lunar recieving lab is going to be having Wizards on the Coast, then Gary Gygax should be working there?
One good try with the water filter runes would be to put one for gold on one of the power station cooling water intakes and see how many weeks it took to pull out a gram or so?
The trick with the panels and lables. Very L Ron Hubbard Battlefield Earth Book 2, or modern security tag designs.
Ah. Forgot the first and obvious things. The hex crystals and rune etching methods either taken from or starting up CPU manufacturing methods. Important part, The Stepper. How to duplicate the multiple layers of the circuitry in multiple places extremly accurately and repeatably. Something about Null valued Newton interference patterns? Positioning patterns that only when perfectly alighned, quantum interference gives zero detectable light,a nd the emmited light detected depends on the positioning errors?
If the shield effect can filter temepratures then you need less of a reentry shield or reduction in intersecting speed because you can keep the colder air around the hull, even more with the thermal runeset, with internal and external Featherfall means a vehicle could achieve multiple g while occupants have a comfortable sealevel ride?
Airshield, featherfall, thumper or paperclip and some thaumic panels could see some researchers maybe from Bristol Hawker Siddly taking their experimental computer controlled Harrier, given its RCS controls, heavily modified, out for a run, which if NASA wasnt careful, the Pegasus would buzz Luna first?
Could be worse. Imagine if the UK crew loaded all teh stuff onto a Concorde. but it accelerates to slow to escape the atmospher. It can fly to the top and get ever slowly faster. Who put it? If you had a ladder tall enough and enough time, you could climb out far enough of the gravity well, to be able to push off and float away. If the ladder was fixed at the bottom, that would be geostationary orbit or so.
This is going to be so much fun, especially with new stuff coming along.
Oh wow, the Boron fission thing goes back to Rutherfords origional work in 1933. https://www.jstor.org/stable/96218
11722212 I never said Luna was invincible, just hard to kill. Imprisoning her works, as would any attack with enough force to overwhelm her toughness, or an effect which bypasses them, such as transformation magic (though she would logically have some degree of magic resistance too).
11722447
Eeyup.
Nice reference to Stanislav Petrov and the nuclear war he averted.
greater
consider
pusher
circumstances
from
Great chapter, there is a lot potencial that is only limited to willingness to pay for it.
I never considered how mutch nuclear weapons costs in keeping them ready. There is probably quite a bit someone can reduce costs. Last I talked about it I think someone mentioned America can blow up/saturated the earth in radiation like 3 times at least. Isn't 2 times enough ?
Luna hopefully can help with sanity problems in leadership of Earth
11722500 It's depressing with the number of times I've read this that I didn't catch those errors.
However, thank you for spotting them for me. They are now fixed.
Cool
Hey, the Gravity Gun. Give it to him, Dog.
Be honest i skimmed these chapters. This geek out is harming pacing. Their had to be better ways of doing this that still loved the plot forward.
Sweet Faust and Farore, they've invented Ultrahand. Good thing Star Swirl isn't here, or they might develop Recall.
My only question is, why aren’t any thaumic principles being weaponized? Yes, Luna would complain, but a government would simply hide it from her and expect it to never get out. Plus, you need to at least conceptualize it before you can have a plan to defend against it. Trivial example: Levitation based gun propulsion system. Solar powered gun with extremely efficient mags. Using transmutation to easily mass produce chemical agents or expensive materials for explosives. Magical grenades, both levitation based and reusable solar powered flashbangs. Even if America doesn’t do it, some other country will, and we’ll need to have considered defenses for them in advance, and test said defenses, requiring us to produce said weapons. This is the nature of countries and warefare.
11723094 If you have a way to do that which wouldn't balloon this to 50,000 words I'd like to hear it. That's a genuine request. For the record, I agree that it hurts the pacing of the alpha plot, getting Luna down to Earth, I alrady said as much in the Author's Notes, but I couldn't see any more elegant way to show that her actions are already impacting Earth.
I was shocked and excited to see this series continuing! Thank you so much for your imaginings here! Four chapters of "Magic, Inc" may not be the best pacing, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless, and a natural outgrowth of beginning to experiment with thaumics. I was enjoying the little clues of how things might be different for
Tom HanksJim Lovell and his crew during the upcoming Luna Retrieval mission. Your knowledge of the Apollo program is impressive.I also found a few typos for you:
11723272
Introduce it when it goes with a plot event. The event happens and as the characters handle it then explain how they know what to do.
Come on, Tricky Dick! Do the right thing, here!
11723186
Who's to say they aren't? Granted it might be dipping a toe into the conspiracy pool, but Black Projects that not even the President or Congress knows about might be a thing.
Also interesting that the Dimensionally Transcendental reference was Glory Road and not Doctor Who, which would have had about six seasons under its belt by now, going into Pertwee's first tenure the following year. Though I suppose it being a primarily British television series would explain that, as syndication in the US didn't start until 1972.
11723461
That’s fair, but given Nixon’s irl decisionmaking, it would be very in-line for him to personally believe he could get away with some blacksite projects, so seeing him completely ignore the topic in the tour just seemed odd. Nixon’s famous quote ‘Well, if the president does it, then that means it is not illegal’ is indicative of his lack of care for ethical boundaries.
Darn, looks like I was late to the party on this one.
I can’t help but wonder what the star wars movies will look like in this timeline now that humans are taking their first real steps towards real sci-fi magi-tech.
Also, you just reminded me that if wishes were ponies has yet to get a book 3.
Nixon has a chance to rewrite how history will know him for. I hope he makes the right choice. And you got to wonder since luna is still up there does it still give the Russians a incentive to still try to get there so they can retrieve her first?
11723958
*looks at the Russian N-1 rocket and it's tendency to just blow up anytime the Russians try and launch one.* yeah no I don't think they will succeed but they probably will try. small known fact about Apollo 11 is that their was a russian mission in orbit Luna 15. it was unsuccessful as the unmanned craft started to begin its decent down to the moon as Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon. Luna 15 crash landed on the surface of the moon and contact was lost on july 21st.
Luna incoming?
camo.fimfiction.net/2Pn5CzbNmsb-TlCxuaHj8q6TedrkekGzvXrCczm6g8w?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F01%2F7b%2Fdd%2F017bdd09e2a5dc3e0146a24937d64895.jpg
I'm not sure what people are talking about with the pacing. I was under the impression that this sort of geeking out was the star of the show. It's most of what I'm here for.
11722447
Dr. Sagan said Luna previously had almost no understanding of ⚡electricity or thermodynamics, so I hope Luna poking her nose into the Apollo Moon lander or the Surveyor 3 probe inspires curiosity about thaumic-to-electricity converters as a thought exercise.
⚡Electricity-generating thaumic technology could reduce America’s dependence on coal, petroleum, and natural gas.
And if the 1973 Oil Crisis occurs, President Nixon (or Ford) might be forced to publicly release electricity-generating thaumic technology to offset the massive economic recession, which may help jumpstart the development of the electric automobile.
11725430 Pretty much. There are multiple ways to convert mana to electricity. One is converting an evocation spell for lightning to generate a constant flow of electricity rather than a burst. Another direct way is to create an ongoing alchemy effect that reverses the chemical reaction in a battery and recharges it Another is to use the mana to drive an animation spell that turns a fly wheel, and use the fly wheel to drive a conventional dyanamo. And of course there's using heating and cooling spells to replace conventional coal or oil burning as a source of power for a steam turbine in a power plant.
But the mana flow itself has to be generated. My take is that there is a reality substrate of infinite energy, call it the source, underlying even the quantum foam at the Planck level. In fact it is the unstructured 'purpose' of reality existing from moment to moment that generates the virtual particle pairs that make up the quantum foam.
This infinite energy substrate can be tapped to generate magical energy (quintessence), which can then be directed into flows (mana). This mana can impose changes on the strucutre of reality. That expends the energy and it rejoins the substrate.
Conscious beings can tap it directly through various mechanisms, very weakly for humans (but mutants are a thing, and so is mass belief), strongly for pony races that are specifically engineered to be able to couple with the source. They can create a higher level of 'purpose' which can draw forth and manipulate the energy.
Absent this, directed mundane energy is needed to drive the generation of quintessence from the source, being consumed in the process. Photothaumic panels are the first example, light isn't being converted to quintessence so much as light is being consumed to drive the process of drawing forth quintessence that already exists from the source.
While this suggests that there is no advantage in generating electricity from mana as it would be just converting energy into mana only to convert it back, that's not quite true.
Kinetic energy could also be used, so a windmill or waterwheel could drive a prayer wheel, even molecular vibration could be used, so that cooling spell they're experimenting with could be taken one step further and be made self sustaining, possibly even generate a net positive mana output. Unlike a conventional heat engine, you don't need a high temperature difference or a cold sink Any source of heat can suddenly be a source of power, even waste heat that would normally be impossible to recover useful energy from.
One idea I came up with is a quantity of radioactive material in a mithril shell as a super RTG. The shell stops any radiation or heat getting out, and could be reinforced with structural spells. Photothaumic and Thermothaumic runesets on the interior surface convert all the heat and gamma radiation into quintessence, which passes thrrough the shell as mitril is a thaumic superconductor. It can then be tapped off the exterior to run thaumic effects or an electric generator as described above. It would be far more efficient than using the heat to run thermocouples, absorbing and converting the energy given off with near 100% efficiency.
Along the same lines is an all up thaumo-nuclear fission reactor where an all up nuclear pile generating a controlled chain reaction is contained in a spherical shell. Even more powerful, but complex to create is a thaumo-nuclear fusion reactor.
This would require the addition of multiple additional effects such as switching spell to swap hydrogen/deuterium for helium, a pressor effect to confine the plasma to the centre of the sphere, and some way to heat the initially injected hydrogen to plasma temperatures. The switching spell would also transfer the kinetic energy of the outgoing helium to the incoming hydrogen. A focussed elemental transmutation or charge suppression effect would increase the likelyhood of fusion occuring. However, the energy output from the reaction would be an order of magnitude higher, making the additional energy cost worthwhile.
A light conversion effect could be cast over the surfaces of conventional photovoltaic solar panels, shifting the spectrum of unused frequencies to something the solar cells could absorb. This would greatly raise the effectiveness of orbiting solar power stations.
11725489
I forget if Luna told NASA that 🥇gold, 🥈silver, and 💎gemstones are ideal mediums/conduits for thaumic enchantments.
Imagine the chaos in the commodities market if gold and gemstones skyrocketed in value. Fortunately for President Nixon, the U.S. government has the world's largest gold reserve (+8,000 metric tons), more than the next three largest gold-holding countries combined (Germany, Italy, and France).
Russia and China rank #5 and #6 for the top 10 national gold reserves.
Luna guards against fans about not to get to meet or even pet Luna:
And yet, I still found it most enjoyable to read
Wow I love this keep up the good work!
I have only just barely started getting into this fic and one of the things I check for in an incomplete fic is how often it’s updated. Seeing how this was started nearly a decade ago and has closer to one update per YEAR I feel like I have to ask this question: When can we expect to see the next chapter?
11727559 I can't say exactly. Probably a couple of months, but I am committed to finishing this story. Right now I'm taking a couple of weeks off to do other things, as the last couple of chapters were a massive effort.
I also want to review Apollo 13, both the movie and the episode of 'From the Earth to the Moon' and some other sources, as we know the movie, for all it's impressive retelling, mythologised and compressed details in the name of better story pacing.
Down side of setting a fanfiction in the real world, at least if you actually care about accuracy. The level of research needed is higher than for a cartoon or video game, and much higher than an AU where you can write what you like.
Wating for the next chapter with bated breath.
FINALLY
SOMEONE THOUGHT OF THE ECONOMY
Thanks for writing!
Shoutout to Rings of Saturn
It almost always shows when someone pours their heart into something, and this shows alright!
Glad you enjoy the story! Two things do stand out as somewhat unrealistic. The idea of monopolizing the new "Gold Rush" exclusively to America without major pushbacks from other countries seems almost like fantasy itself. Secondly, the notion that Russia or China would allow Luna to become an American citizen without considering her a citizen of their countries is quite far-fetched. Perhaps a more plausible scenario involves Luna being regarded as a universal citizen of Earth, necessitating diplomatic agreements to address the situation. This would likely involve discussions on military implications and scientific considerations that the president and scientists would engage in. Adding on any weapon technology would be put under immediate scrutiny.
11723958
Yep he can still make the wrong decision. He still has that stick up his ass about drugs.
IIRC this actually happened during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This one guy, Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov, was a Soviet Naval officer that prevented a Soviet nuclear torpedo launch in response to what would be a false alarm. He effectively saved the world from a nuclear war.
Also will watergate happen in this AU? If so, then Nixon can kiss his dreams of having his face on Mount Rushmore goodbye.
In any case, I'm glad the Magic Inc. chapters are over. It's certainly an interesting subject don't get me wrong, but most of the details went over my head and I read it for the sake of keeping up with the plot. Time to get back to Luna and the main story.
11727637
IRL options for Luna’s medical team:
11740402 I would think not. Watergate was a bit of total foolishness entirely based on Nixon's paranoia of conspiracies against him. There was absolutely no need for it whatsoever. In fact, he won reelection in a staggering landslide, and with Watergate, he shot himself in the foot needlessly.
Do not forget the drastic effects of altering even a small event in the nexus of causality. Something as simple as tripping the Serbian anarchist at the cafe would have totally altered history, as the trigger for WWI would literally not have been pulled.
The discovery of Luna and REAL MAGIC is not merely a pebble making ripples in the pond of causality, it's an ASTEROID IMPACT, completely vaporizing the pond and creating an entirely new massive crater to fill. We're talking fantasy suddenly becoming reality. EVERYTHING would change so drastically, history would be thoroughly rewritten.
Aside from NASA, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a major boost in philanthropic and corporate grants and scholarships to capitalize on the discovery of “thaumics” and extraterrestrial life, giving colleges the money to overhaul their physics and engineering departments.
😷For medical schools, maybe a new career track that encourages pre-med students (and veterinarians) to cross-train in biophysics and mathematical biology.
👨🍳🍕In culinary schools, greater interest in vegetarian cuisine if it becomes publicly known that Princess Luna doesn’t eat meat aside from the occasional fish. Celebrity cookbooks always sell well, and right now Luna is the most popular celerity on Earth.
🎭 For the humanities and social sciences, women’s studies classes could examine Equestria’s matriarchal society where mares outnumber stallions three-to-one. I’m not sure if African American Studies would be interested in Equestria’s pre-unification tribalism as a parallel to the American Civil Rights Movement, but proof of Equestria’s successful post-unification racial coexistence could draw their attention.
11738930
Can you imagine that being so because otherwise she'll be overwhelmed by the political nonsense and hard work. Just like when she tried to stand in for her sister in that 1 episode. Lol 😂
My goodness, that was a nerd out chapter of EPIC proportions, so much brain candy! I'm truly impressed at your level of technical theory, that and the wonderful tidbits of historical socio-political introspection and it's like watching a documentary from an alternate Earth.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I love how convincing you make it!
Now, when will we get more moon pony/astronaut cuddles?