September 2 [National Institute for Aviation Research]
September 2
It was another cloudy day, but they were kind of breaking up. I'd hoped that they'd clear before the sun came up but they didn't.
I took a shower and shook myself off then sat on the bed to preen my wings. It had a white comforter and I decided that if I piled up a couple of pillows next to my head and looked straight out the window it was almost like being on a cloud.
I pushed the pillows aside and rolled around on top of the bed, stretching out my back and then hopped off the edge and made a cup of coffee, then went over to the chair with my Bible.
God promised that He would punish the false prophets with a bad storm, and that He would punish the people who had charms to trap other people. And He also was mad at a girl who He had found in a field and cleaned and clothed and then she became a prostitute.
God kept saying how He would punish everyone who was bad, and Ezekiel kept telling them what God told him to say, and he promised that the father was not responsible for the sins of the son, nor the son for the sins of the father.
Then the town elders came to talk to Ezekiel and God told him to tell them that He had done so many good things for them and they had turned their back on Him. He had given them simple rules to follow but they didn't, and so now He was mad at them. And then he told Ezekiel to tell a forest that God was going to burn it. I wasn't sure why He was mad at a forest.
I put away my Bible when Mister Salvatore knocked on my door and we went downstairs to the dining room. Since I knew where we were going, he rode the elevator while I glided down the stairs.
I had to be careful when I did that in case somebody was coming up them, so I had to stop at every landing and look to make sure that it was clear before I could go on. Human staircases are steeper than pony staircases, so it’s probably a good thing that I did because otherwise I might get going too fast by the bottom and when there are cement walls on every side there aren’t a whole lot of ways to lose extra flight speed.
We had the breakfast buffet again and then when we were done eating I had to go back up to my room in order to get my flight gear. Mister Salvatore said that I would want to bring it all, which was exciting. I still didn’t know where we were going, but I was looking forward to flying, because it had been almost a week since the last time I got to do any serious flying, and if I had my camelback that meant that I was (hopefully) going to get to do some serious flying.
I didn’t know if I should get dressed for flying right away but it was easier than trying to carry everything down with me, since I could only hold so much in my mouth.
When I came back into the lounge a couple of people gave me strange looks, I think just ‘cause they’d gotten used to me not wearing clothes and now I was wearing some.
He said that I wouldn’t need my flight gear right away, so Miss Cherilyn helped me take it off and put it in the truck. Then we drove past the airport that I could see out of my window and it was another airplane factory that made Beech airplanes and I wondered if that was where we were going but Mister Salvatore said that it wasn’t.
Instead, we drove through a couple of neighborhoods and past a cemetery and then we went through a parking lot and were on a college campus. Mister Salvatore parked in a parking lot and said that we were here, and I still wasn’t quite sure where here was, but I followed him up to a building that was called the National Institute for Aviation Research.
There were people already waiting for us in the lobby, and the first man who was Doctor Bladud came forward and shook my hoof, then introduced me to everyone else. They were all doctors, which meant that they were very smart. There was a Doctor Grimaldi, Firnas, Mozhayskiy, and Teleshov, and they all taught different things at the research center.
Doctor Bladud explained what they did at the National Institute for Aviation Research, which was a lot of things. He said that there were a lot more professors and we'd meet some of them later, but they did things that probably wouldn't interest me, like nondestructive testing and airplane crashworthiness.
He said that humans had wanted to fly for thousands of years and that there were a lot of myths of people who tried to glue feathers to their arms thinking that that would make them able to fly but of course it didn't. And then he said that over the centuries humans had moved away from trying to imitate birds and made kites and light-than-air flying machines, like balloons, and eventually they had figured out how to put a motor on an oversized kite and made the first airplanes.
And from that they'd learned all sorts of things about aerodynamics and what made things fly and he said that the Wright Brother's famous first flight was a shorter distance than the wingspan of a 747 airplane.
And he said after that humans started turning their eyes back towards birds and found out that birds had a lot in common with our machines, after all, especially birds that could glide long distances like the albatross.
We went to a classroom that was empty, and Doctor Firnas drew some sketches on the markerboard that showed how an airplane got lift, because the wind from when it flew pushed it up, and that was kind of basic stuff because every foal knew that you could tow another pegasus and she'd fly without even flapping her wings. That's how a lot of us learned after we'd graduated from short hops over the cloud.
Plus it was good to build up the wing muscles, since even though you weren't flapping, you had to keep your wings out and angle them a bit if you wanted to turn or change altitude.
So everyone wound up talking for a little bit about the fundamentals of aviation and then they all wanted to take a look at my wings, 'cause they said that there had been some studies done on pegasuses but not enough. So I asked if it was okay if I flew up onto one of the desks and they said that it was and I did. I was a little bit nervous having them all crowd around me but Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn were right there with me and they wouldn't let anything bad happen.
I held my wings out and they studied them (which was kind of embarrassing; I kept thinking that I hadn't preened them this morning and what would they think if they saw some crooked feathers) and then Dr. Mozhayskiy asked if if was okay if he touched one and he promised he'd be gentle so I let him. And he said that it felt just like normal feathers which I thought was a funny thing to say because what else would it feel like?
They wanted to see if I could pretend to fly without actually flying, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be, since I wasn't moving at all. And they had me pretend that I was climbing and diving and turning and a couple of times I accidentally flew off the table and once when I did I bonked Dr. Teleshov with a hoof but he didn't mind.
So I was surprised that that had taken up the whole morning because when you really get involved in something it's easy to forget to eat, and if Dr. Bladud hadn't gotten a telephone call I think we might have been in the classroom all day without anybody noticing.
Just like at the Cessna factory, they had had lunch brought in, and it was mostly sandwiches and salad and potato chips but they also had some timothy hay that was just for me and I asked whose idea that was and Doctor Grimaldi said he had ordered the food and the woman from the caterers had been very confused by his request but had said that she could do it.
After we'd eaten we took a tour of the rest of the building, and I got to look at some of the other labs, and they were all interesting. I talked to Doctor Lomonosov, who was in charge of the aging aircraft department. That was important because as airplanes got older things wore out or broke, and it was important to discover them before something bad happened. He had pictures in his office of broken airplanes and broken airplane pieces.
He said that the information also helped the airplane manufacturers make their airplanes last a longer time and be more reliable and he said that there were commercial airplanes with over a hundred thousand hours of flight time, which he said was over eleven years.
Then we went to a wind tunnel, which was a special chamber that fans blew air into and you could see how the air went around an airplane and they asked if I was interested in trying it out for science.
I thought it would be a lot of fun, and Doctor Teleshov explained that if I was willing, they'd have me try without any gear first and then add a few pieces of gear because they were really curious about what that would do to my balance.
So Mister Salvatore went out to the truck to get it while they demonstrated the wind tunnel so I would know what it sounded like. And he said it would be louder inside of it, and that they were going to keep the wind speed low. He said that I could fly in place when I was in there, and they were going to take movies of me if I didn't mind.
It was kind of loud outside and Doctor Firnas opened a small inspection door and let me stick a hoof in (the door wasn't much bigger than that) and also let me put my ear up against it, too, so I'd hear the noise.
It was quieter than the tornado, but not by a lot.
There was also a device that let them put jets of smoke into the tunnel, and he turned that on so that I could see them. He said that made it easier to see where the air was going, and after they'd turned it off they let me go inside and smell the smoke to be sure that it wouldn't bother me.
Mister Salvatore came back with all my flight gear, and they had me get ready by standing on scales—one for each hoof—and they wrote down how much weight I carried on each leg.
So I got inside and they turned it on and it was weird because normally wind's gusty but here it went from nothing up to speed at a nice, steady rate until it got to the speed they wanted.
I flew a little bit downwind of their smoke pipes, and it was really strange to be able to fly straight and level without moving at all.
We'd agreed that they would turn the smoke on and off, so that I didn't have to breathe it in, and they'd flash a light five seconds before the smoke started, and then run the smoke for fifteen seconds. At first it was a lot to concentrate on but after a little while I got used to it.
Each time I put on a piece of gear they re-weighed me, and when we'd finally gotten done with all of that, I got undressed again and they let me rest and have a snack before we went to the next trial, which was going to be speed. This time there wouldn't be any smoke at all; they just wanted to see how I flew at different speeds. They said that they were going to let the wind slowly speed up and once I started to move backwards they would figure that was my top speed for the test and turn it off, because they were a little worried about me blowing down the tunnel and crashing against the barrier at the end.
That was really tricky because I had to concentrate really hard on my speed since the wind came up slowly, I had to move faster and faster to keep up with it and it wasn't anything I'd ever tried before. So the first run ended too soon when I overflew the marks and then coasted back a little bit to get back in place and they thought that meant I couldn't fly any faster and shut it down. Then we decided that as long as I was in the glass part it would be all right, but they said that once I got back to the halfway part of the last pane of glass, they were going to shut it down just for safety.
So we tried again and that went a lot better because I didn't have to stay as close to one spot. It was still too short—it looked plenty long enough when I wasn't inside it flying, but when I was I really got to one end or the other pretty quickly.
The last test they wanted to do was a gliding test and that was a lot more difficult to set up, because they had to get the speed just right so that I wouldn't blow too far back or go too far forwards and it worked best when I flew up at the very end of the tunnel and then glided forwards until I got to the very front.
It was a nice way to cool down, too.
When we were all done they let me rinse off outside with a garden hose, because their building didn't have any proper showers or baths in it and I didn't have my shampoo or conditioner anyway.
We got to go out to dinner again, this time to a restaurant called the Newport Grill and I had Norwegian salmon and lobster ravioli for dinner, and we talked more about flying and then before we ordered dessert they gave me an honorary degree, just for flying in their wind tunnel, which I thought was really nice of them. It was in a frame, so I could hang it on my wall. And they said that once they finished analyzing their data they'd send me copies of their research papers, even if I was back in Equestria. And then we had ice-cream for dessert, and everyone shook my hoof, and we went back to the hotel.
We had to leave in the middle of the night to get to the train, so Mister Salvatore carried my flight gear up to my room and then helped me pack everything into my saddlebags, and he said that he'd call me when it was time to wake up and if I didn't get up he'd just come into my room and get me. So I told him that I'd be sleeping in the chair so that was where he should look. And then I pulled my blankets over to the chair and curled up in them and I wanted to bring the telephone closer to make sure that I would hear it but the wire wasn't long enough to get it off the nightstand.
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That's a research paper I'd like to read.
Interesting. I wonder if it will teach the Pegasi things about their flight that they don't already know.
She should bring said degree to school... I swear, only Silver would get a degree by taking time off from school.
The tangents, though, the fathers are totally responsible for.
Someone finally put the pony in the detector.
and he promised that that father was not responsible for the sines of the son, nor the son for the sins of the father.
The co sines are the sole responsibility of the owner.
♫ Just a small town mare
Stayin' in a lonely hotel
She took the midnight train
Goin' anywhere... ♫
Yeah, I should probably just stop now.
Interestingly enough, the Wright brothers big contribution to aviation is NOT their aircraft. Plenty of other people were working on that, if it hadn't been them it would have been someone else. Their big contribution was the wind tunnel & THAT was a critical contribution because it let them do modeling & test airplanes to some extent before they ever flew. The trend has always been to bigger & more expensive aircraft. Wind tunnels let you test without flying, saving money and lives.
Well that was an interesting day, nice to see all those scientists so interested in Silver. Presumably pegasus flight is technically impossible and boosted by magic, it'll be interesting to see how that appears in their reports. It would be fun to see them all scratching their heads at how say bulk biceps flies and if dash was about I could see her trying to beat the wind tunnel, maybe they should get one for wonder bolt training.
"So I asked if it was okay if I flew up onto one of the desks and they said that it was and _ did"
I think there is an "I" missing at the end.
The scientists probably didn't (and I don't know how they would) test for localized changes in gravity.
Accelerometers? Gyroscopes?
I know a pony that could benefit a lot from that kind of research... just be careful with the wind speeds.
An indoor rainboom might be problematic. On the other hoof, putting measuring equipment on a pegasus doing that (outdoors) should make for some very interesting readings.
Anyway, great chapter. The SG nerding with engineers and scientists is always wonderful to read, she's totally in her element when doing that. Fulfilling their publishing requirements that year will be a breeze for these researchers; that data is going to be a free ride into 'Science' and 'Nature'.
Doctor Glow?
Haha I wonder how a wonderbolt would do in a windtunnel.
And from the chapter befor, when ever something happens on a plan with silver and they ask for someonewith pilot experience like in the movies, silver raising her hoof telling she has a pilot license and logged simulator hours Hahaha
isnt two "that" redundant?
you've now got 1 0000 0000 chapters! </nerd>
Yeah, if he wants to do trigonometry that's his business.
Oh my god, a wind tunnel is basically a pegasus-treadmill. They could put giant fans in Equestrian gyms.
Something Id like to see them try is a polarizing filter on the Schlierian imager. As in the main method detects variations in density in airflow do you can see all the twistly fiddly vortices, but polarisation is affected by other things, such as magnetic fields. Kirlian will give you the electric fields, and then theres the usual UWB DC to 3 Ghz radio frequency scanner analyzer.
Of course, its pretty reasonable that any effects Magic are doing will not be the nice simple single frequency CW, or even chirped UWB, but more like chaos oscilation braided zero sum UWB, where th functions needed to describe it are four spacially dimentional. Think of how sunlight glints off waves in the sea, now do that volumetrically, that how magic Might be coded.
Poor scientists. The more they demand the universe works they want it to, the less it does so. :Discord:
Well that's it, I've finally caught up... Now I only get 1 chapter a day
7697816 Dash would complain that it's going too slow and tell 'em to kick it up a few notches, only to be told it's already going at full blast.
7698139 Rainbow Dash would need to use one of NASA's wind tunnels, as they can go to and above Mach 1.
7698191 Still not fast enough. Dash can go much faster, at least in short bursts, anyway.
So, we'll finally see how pegasus magic shapes the air-flow around their wings and bodies!
<That's supposed to be a secret!)
My vote is ...they're equipped with a magical force field.
7698139 yeah. not every pony is a quick as da Dash... still, i wonder how other wonderbolts would do ...
@7698372
Did the Pegasus Team did the water lifting thing on a lake or somewhere ? I think that would be the hit in Vegas or over at the Saudis
When they do the math they will see everything is normal assuming a 20 meter wingspan or 5 kilograms of mass. Compare that to the actual values to find the value of magic.
This was quite the opportunity for Silver. A lot of new info for humans to look over as more equestrians arrive onto earth.
Should answer the question of whether pegasus fly by magically reducing their weight or magically increasing their lift. Hmm. I wonder what happens when they connect a pony to athletic monitoring equipment and ask them to perform race specific acts of magic? Probably endless confusion if levitating a feather or several kilos or turning lead into gold all uses the same amount of biological energy. Which I suspect it might.
Hmm, the smoke test would confirm or refute one of my theories on Pegasus magic. My hypothesis is that they reduce their mass to fly (which explains several other phenomenon as well), but this leaves them vulnerable to things like wind gusts. I think they also generate a null field around them to alleviate this. So the smoke should show some telltale signs if this is the case.
Also aging and fatigue is a bitch. I'm glad my career path is starting to get away from it a bit.
7697760 gravity would be Accelerometer. But my bet is on mass reduction so they'd use a load cell (basically a fancy scale) or kinetic experiments to find that.
7697158
At school:
"Wait, you're telling me you just up and got a degree over summer break? And you still came back to the cramped rooms, crummy food, sucky homework, and angry teachers?"
In Equestria:
"So... you got a doctorate in 'Being a Pegasus'?"
I'm oddly happy about how much care they took in the wind tunnel tests to make sure of Silver's comfort and safety.
7697139
You know that's one that's going to be popular with just about everyone, once it gets published.
7697145
I'm sure that it would. There are probably lots of things that they don't really think about because they just do it.
7697158
"I don't need to take any classes in the fall--I already got my degree. See!"
7697160
Yes, they are. The Bible says so.
7697212
They've been doing that to the poor unicorns for years, now it's the pegasuses's turn.
7697331
Exactly.
7697390
Once upon a time--and I think it's gone now--taking 'the midnight train to anywhere' was part of Google's directions.
static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Midnight_f20a53_1080711.jpg
7697419
That innovation has benefitted more than just aviation, too. Cars go in wind tunnels, even bridges and skyscrapers do sometimes.
7697488
Heh, oops. It's Aviation.
7697731
It would have to be. There's no way they've got the wingspan for actual flight without some sort of magical boost, unless they're super-light, like a couple of pounds, tops. And their aerodynamics are terrible, too. So this study can't be the conclusive one, but rather the study that shows them what questions they need to answer in the next study.
I could totally see Rainbow trying to beat it. "Doesn't this thing go faster?"
There are probably natural 'wind tunnels' here and there in Equestria, and those might be the perfect place for Wonderbolts to train.
7697743
Correction made; thank you!
7697760
There is a tool you can use which I've seen on Mythbusters, but I don't know if it would work in a wind tunnel. You might have to attach the instrument to Silver Glow to get a reading, which is another problem.
I can say that it is an actual fact that cats can turn off gravity when they want to, so a pony doing it isn't unreasonable.
7697836
Maybe just a little bit. Corrected, thank you!
7697890
Sweet!
7697901
I know! Just wait until they catch on back in Equestria.
Incidentally, and you probably knew this, but there are actually horse treadmills.
(This isn't the best video, but it shows a bunch of different things that they test with actual horse treadmills.)
7697963
Oh, you can bet that in the future of this universe, the simple one-day test is going to spawn hundreds of others, just to try and answer all the questions that this one almost certainly didn't.
I know--turns out that the rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper.
7698109
<hugs>
7698139
They do have a supersonic wind tunnel there, but it's not big enough to fit a pony in.
7698191
How big are they? The lab where Silver is also has a supersonic tunnel, but it's too small to fit a pony in.
7698291
Can you just imagine them crunching the numbers and figuring out that none of them add up like they're supposed to?
7698872
If I was doing the research, I think I'd want to start with a pony who could do long flights at a slower speed, just to get more consistent results, then work my way up to the faster ones and see what changes as they go quicker. I'd also worry about the effects of rainbow contrails in my wind tunnel--do those have physical effects on the machinery? Because it might be a really bad day if you have to explain to your boss how everyone downwind of your wind tunnel exhaust is complaining about rainbow spots all over their houses and cars.
They probably won't, unless the tornado team has some free time and a good place to do it where if they screw up and cause an actual tornado that they can't stop it won't hurt anything before it breaks up. But if they've got a good handle on it, and can keep it in place, it would be popular both as theatre and a way to get water somewhere that hasn't got it.
7699072
That would give you a good, quick and dirty calculation. There are probably so many other variables you couldn't come up with an absolute value, of course, but you've have ballpark numbers you could work with.
7699446
And the chance to stump an entire university full of scientists as they start to run the numbers.
Of course, Silver doesn't know the second part yet.
7700264
Or if they do both. Actually, one way that they could magically increase their lift would be if their wings acted as if they were much bigger, and had a magical field around the edges of them which also interacted with the air.
Oh, man, that would be fun to set up. We know from canon that using too much magic exhausts Twilight, so there is a physical effect, but it might not be linear, and it might vary a lot from pony to pony. You'd have to do a lot of experiments with a lot of unicorns to start getting enough workable numbers that you could figure it out.
Incidentally, guess who spent a lot of her summer in a lab performing that kind of physics experiments? When she wasn't chasing tail, that is.
7703072
Yeah, the smoke test would show if any of their flight magic affects the airflow around them (although I bet they'd have to do some more modeling and calculations to figure out what was 'normal' around a pegasus, which means that at some point the lab will probably have a model Silver to put in their wind tunnel), although I'm not sure that it would be able to conclusively prove that they reduce their mass.
Could you use a load cell on a pony in flight? I was thinking about that, but I couldn't come up with a way that you'd rig it to get your numbers.
Yeah, but it's led to some really cool experiments.
lessonslearned.faa.gov/Comet1/YokeUncleTank_mid.jpg
7703150
"Yeah, and all I had to do was fly in a little tunnel for a while. Human college is really easy."
7711754
Well, they'd never get another chance to put a pegasus in a wind tunnel if they accidentally hurt her. But all the scientists do care about the safety of their test subjects, and people like Mister Salvatore are there to weed out the ones who don't design their experiments with care.
7735940
Probably around the same time that they had you swim across the Atlantic Ocean when you asked for walking directions from New York to London, England.
7736055
I think so. There were some other good ones, too--jetskiing across the Pacific, and a few others from song lyrics, as well. It's kind of a pity they're gone . . . or maybe they're just better hidden.
At least you can still do a barrel roll with Chrome.
And then SCIENCE HAPPENED
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/7/29/384090__safe_solo_twilight+sparkle_princess+twilight_science_artist-colon-paradigmpizza_laboratory_mad+scientist_safety+goggles.png
7924638
7736015
My headcanon: they increase effective air density in interactions with aerodynamic surfaces of the pegasus. Essentially, as the whole world is infused with unbound ambient magic, which behaves as a separate medium in a parallel plane, with own densities, currents, eddies, phase changes etc, ambient magic underlying air is mostly like a dense gas / superfluid, and pegasus magic locally binds air with it, essentially making air locally considerably more dense - in particular not at the frontal edges (which would increase drag) but at lifting surfaces. The same mechanism is used to manipulate clouds by binding their water to the magic of aether and shaping that magic, dragging the vapor behind.
8341688
That's not an unreasonable idea, and I think it's very similar to what another reader suggested they might be doing in order to fly despite their terrible aerodynamics and tiny wings.
Really, there are lots of ways that flight could work in Equestria, and of course we know that birds can also land on clouds, suggesting that some sort of air/water vapor manipulation isn't exclusive to pegasi, but may be doable by many or most flying species in Equestria.
The trick is coming up with a plausible explanation on how it might work on Earth, and I'll readily admit that I just mostly handwaved that away. It's harder for Silver Glow to fly on Earth than it is in Equestria, and she has more trouble with the feral Earth clouds than she would have back home, but she's making it work anyways.
As established, yes Time Zone changes suck
Things for the Equine Overlord To Do List: Make ALL windows able to be opened. And big enough for pegasi.
Good Pony, cleaning up after herself. But would have been fun to see the maid's reaction to the pega nest.
The reminder that The Bible was doing Lovecraftian Abominations before Lovecraft. Are we sure someone didn't mix in a few chunks of the Necronomicon? Also, Fire Rainbow? Why do I feel like that's just, like, an ordinary thing down in Aus?
Wow.... As has been established..... OT God is a fucking asshole.
Silver is smart pony, and she knows you love to spoil her, so moment she learned there was an airplane factory nearby, she knew what was going on.
Just b nice and smile, all you need for Pony to like you.
Good idea to get used to the plane for the sake of jumping out of one.
Professional courtesy to the fellow flyer to let her sit up front.
1. I want to see what a pony pre-flight checklist would be like
2. Given this is several decades or so after Twi ascended, not likely QUITE enough time for her to spread the need for every single facet of every pony's life to be dominated by a checklist.
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/257/661/7c3.png
And humans are learning to make an explict 'no flying' rule when they see pegasi coming.
Don't feel bad Silver, this is likely the best day of work they've had, they'd love for you to stickaround.
Excited pony having too much fun to even realize she hasn't eaten. Gotta love when you get THAT into something.
Silver, smack him with a wing for the BBQ thing.
Of course they all want to pile in and watch Pony Pilot a PLane
Of course the full training would be fin for pony.
"Driving the airplane" Oh Silver.
Well, if this hadn't been a simulator, it still would have been the cutest fiery death ever.
'Touch and Crash' pppffffffftttttt
She is a 'real pilot' thank you very much.
Of course airplane people want see pony be awesome flying thing.
Yup, she's a natural, and fun thinking of experienced pilots hearing what she does all the time and just going. "Damn... just... damn."
Do it! Get full fledge pilot's license and fly those planes!
8343731
I mostly go with a combo of Pegasi pushing on the ambient magic field to help with flight as well as the air itself (which in your case, could say is lesser then on Equestria and humans have no way of tapping into it. OR go the route of another fic, and the field is 'stiffer' and more viscous, harder to move due to disuse.) And all ponies have latent tactile TK abilities. (It's how hooves work, explain EP's being able to control their tails in ways that they shouldn't be able to, how Pegasi keep carts and such in the air, and is why TK is the one thing ALL Unicorns know and the most basic thing they learn first, as it's just learning to project their usual TK field out further.
Then of course you have the possibility that Equestria simply has much lower gravity hen Earth.
Rule do not apply to Kitty unless Kitty wills it. Kitty is above all! The universe exists, solely to provide toys and noms for Kitty!
Also, Dresden Files tangent. Harry, and all other wizards, have something called 'The Sight' that lets them see the true nature of anything they look at. See through any illusion and see the real, inner nature of everything and everyone and everything. (Downside being, anything seen this way is forever imprinted in your mind and can never be forgotten or dulled, it is indellably etched into their memoris, and some of the stuff out there.... well.. would you like to see the very truest nature of an eldritch creature?) Everything he uses it one, becomes differnt as he sees that inner nature, all except one being who looks completely the same no matter what, his cat. There is no truer thing in the universe then a cat. A cats deepest nature, is to be cat.
"Simple rules" yeah.........
Well, there is one method to lose a lot of speed, really fast in that stairwell.....
She is getting to almost pavlovian levels of response to having he camelback with her.
"Could only hold so much in my mouth" #ponyproblems also #outofcontextquotes
A place for studying things that fly, how have they not already drafted pegasi to get over and be studied?
"Nondestructive testing' AKA the boring way.
"airplane crashworthiness" AKA the fun way.
D'awwww pega kites!
Also, D'awwwww so sweet how much she trusts Mr Salvatore and Mrs Cherlyn. Knowing she's safe with them around no matter what.
What else would the feathers feel like? Either Pure Awesome or the stuff of dreams? Maybe magic?
Hoofy bonks to the head are simply the price of SCIENCE!
Wow, they are well prepared to pamper their test subject, even getting in Hay.
Pegasus in Wind Tunnel? ALL THE YES!
Yay foldable ears for going in loud things!
It is nice how accommodating they are being and how careful about everything. They know how easy this could be to fuck up and never get another chance.
Well, now she has a good number for just how much her gear weighs.
Given just how durable we've seen ponies being... I'd be more worried about her breaking the wind tunnel if she hit a wall. And if it was a grey, derp eyed mare.. well lets hope your insurance is up to date and covers 'act of pony'.
Well, she knows more about flying then all of them, at least on the 'how to do it' level, so yeah, get a degree.
The copy of their paper will just be fifty pages of "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! This makes no sense! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"
Now I'm picturing him just coming in the room and picking up the sleeping Silver to carry her to the car......... and I think that's another diabetic coma coming on......
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I can never remember with them if my phone knows to change or not and that adds to the confusion, because of course it knows once it grabs a new tower.
That’s just a smart design choice for any hotel or apartment complex that wants to attract pony guests.
Honestly, that probably wouldn’t be the weirdest thing she’d ever seen.
Yeah, there’s plenty of really crazy stuff in there, and as I recall the whole description of God’s chariot hurts your brain more and more the longer you think about it.
I think that they do have fire rainbows in Australia (can’t think of any reason why they wouldn’t), but they’re probably really rare there, too. I’ve only ever seen one.
He certainly didn’t pull any punches . . . although then again, looking at it from His perspective, He created the world and mankind in His image, and He gave them a few simple rules to follow, and they couldn’t get that right.
What would be funny is if Mr. Salvatore knocked on her door and she was gone, having started the tour on her own (probably Jodi wouldn’t have minded terribly much).
It’s true.
The funny thing about that is that most of the first-timers are going to be nervous about the jumping out part; Silver would be the one that didn’t like the flight up, but once it came time to leap out into the sky, no hesitation.
Especially since she almost certainly has more flight time than the pilots.
Wings preened, camelback full, blinking light on, reserve anchovies and hay in saddlebags.
I wonder, though, it would make sense for Twilight to be involved to some degree in Equestrian education, and there might well be checklist classes.
Then again, that might actually be kind of standard at high-end magic universities. You don’t want to get partway through a summoning ritual and then realize the the only virgin blood in the room is what’s in your veins. That’d probably end badly.
To be fair, most of our construction, workspaces, and the like, weren’t designed with the idea of ponies randomly flying around in them.
Oh, hell yes they would.
He can’t help who he is. And honestly, while I’ve never experienced a BBQ truck, I can’t help but wonder if they have sides that Silver Glow might like, things like cornbread.
Well, yeah, of course. Just think of all the answers you’d get to questions you never knew you had. Do her flight instincts let her fly it right out of the gate? How can she work the controls? At what point, when the airplane is clearly out of control, does she try to bail through a side window and fly to safety, dooming all left aboard?
I can just imagine a pony like Spitfire or Rainbow Dash going through it, and then writing a book for pegasi titled Stupid Things Humans Have To Do To Fly.
She’s not entirely wrong.
I know, right?
This is why they didn’t trust her with the controls to the real airplane.
I can say from having playing flight sim back in the day (way back in the day) that this is an accurate description for a really bad landing.
Actually, in all honestly, she’s in the weird grey zone of being both the aircraft and the pilot. She’s not very good at flying a real airplane (although of course with practice she probably could get good), so in that aspect she’s not much of a pilot. Although if you were to separate her into her ‘brain’ as the pilot and her ‘body’ as the aircraft, then she is very good.
Well, yeah, of course they do. They could probably spend a whole day doing nothing but watch her fly. How soon is it going to be before a group of scientists rents a hot air balloon and a flock of pegasi for a day or two? Or researchers back in Equestria doing it, drifting above cloud cities and recording everything.
The whole difference between “when I see a big thundercloud, I fly the other way” and her “me and my friends fly right into it and knock it out of the sky.” Put any of her go-pro videos of flying in a storm in front of a pilot and watch them tremble.
The phrase ‘full fledged’ in this context.
Silver Glow--Pegasus 1--licensed transport pilot.
Someone wanted to write a spinoff story where a pony became a 737 pilot, and I’m sad that that never came to fruition.
I think that the pegasi use the magic to lighten them and anything that they touch (easier on Equestria, since there’s more magic), and that the vast majority of their magic goes out through their wings. Earth ponies hooves; unicorns horns (obviously). Yeah, I do think that they can virtually all do short-range TK with their hooves.
I prefer the field being lesser on Earth for whatever reason (lack of Harmony, maybe, or not enough Unobtanium in the Earth’s crust).
I seem to recall that there were some videos that discussed that and the potential problems with that idea. (Another one was a denser atmosphere, so that flying was more like swimming.)
There’s a great video from the Slow Mo Guys showing their Kitty jumping off air.
So much like the sunglasses in the movie They Live (with Rowdy Roddy Piper!)
I fully support this headcanon.
Heck, just boiling it down to the 10 Commandments, those are pretty simple . . . or should be.
There is, but it’s not ideal.
She could flare and make a hoof-first landing on the wall, which if nothing else would be a matter of great puzzlement to whoever noticed the set of four deep hoofprints in the wall.
It’s the flight accessory that all ponies need. And let’s be honest, most of us have learned to have that level of obsession with having our cell phones with us at all times.
Long research queues, special permissions needed, potential dangers of putting pegasi in wind tunnels and so forth. Plus unicorn magic is in some ways sexier, since it’s flashier, so that’s probably where the first wave of research went.
A lot of times, though, the one informs the other. That is, you don’t want to have to break potentially flyable airplanes to find flaws in them.
You know that’s a thing that ponies do.
She’s not wrong, either.
Dr. Mozhayskiy doesn’t realize it yet, but now that he’s touched pegasi feathers, he’ll soon be lining up to go to Equestria as a wing-preener. That’s how pegasi get their loyal wing-preening slaves.
Exactly!
For several of them, this is the launching point of multiple research grants, scientific papers, maybe even Nobel Prizes. Catering in hay is about the least they could do to get her onboard . . . it’s a good thing that ponies aren’t greedy.
Also, I just thought of this, putting a pony in the Vomit Comet, just to see what happens. For Science!
#ponyperks
Oh yeah, totally. You can bet that Mr. Salvatore also had more than a few suggestions and/or demands for how this was all going to be done before he even agreed to let Silver Glow set hoof anywhere near a wind tunnel.
They did forget to weigh it when she wasn’t wearing it, which might have lead to an interesting discovery on their parts. (But then, that wouldn’t be an obvious thing for them to think of.)
“I just don’t know what went wrong.”
Actually, that would be interesting . . . they could just give her the final exam for the most complicated theory class and watch her pass it with flying colors. Vocabulary might be the only issue--she knows instinctively how it works, but not necessarily what it’s called.
Or as Dr. Tetsoya said more than once, “more data is needed.”
I wonder if that’s part of their training to become pony helpers? Say, they have a cuddle-pile of sleeping foals, and you have to be able to walk into the room without collapsing of a cuteness overload.
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Given the human ability to adapt and master fields of study, I wouldn't be surprised to see nerds like these at Wonderbolts HQ.
I could definitely see them using wind tunnels as practice/training, and I'm sure they'd appreciate some of the electronic equipment if it could be made lighter. (Let's be honest, it can be.)
Especially at bare minimum the camelbak/GoPro combo.
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Oh, yeah, as soon as they can get permission, there’d be all sorts of scientists and aeronautical engineers all over it. Like, back in the day there was a show where they filmed stuff in slow motion (maybe seven to ten years ago, before YouTube rendered TV shows like that obsolete), and there was one episode I remember where they figured out how to hook up a high speed camera to a MRI machine and filmed a hummingbird hovering. I think that’s what it was. Anyway, they got a bird biologist to watch the footage, ‘cause they were camera guys and didn’t know crap about birds, and the guy just had this look of amazement because they’d just solved a problem that had plagued scientists as to how hummingbirds hovered--apparently, they’ve got some kind of fluid sac in them that they shift back and forth (like a tuned mass damper) to counteract the thrust from their wings.
Imagine if you could ask a pony who knows how to fly specific questions . . . humans would be all over that, and probably rather quickly learn things that we didn’t know about flight.
Wind tunnels are basically pegasus treadmills.
I think I mentioned this before, but in one of my upcoming stories, the pegasi have equipment packs that have lots of built-in functionality, camelbacks, radios, nav lights, and so on. You’re totally right if the demand is there, the equipment can be made lighter and more practical. Silver Glow and the tornado ponies are at the early, experimental stage of pegasus equipment.
Cement can remove all of your flight speed very quickly, unless you are Rainbow Dash.
No, it means that they spent a lot of time and money proving that they were very smart. A subtle distinction, but a relevant one for the various unemployed MENSA members.
EDIT: In other stories, ponies can also just be the size of the "blind bag" toys and things will work a lot better that way. Can't really do that if you want them to interact with humans on equal terms, though.