September 22 [The Planets]
September 22
Meghan's alarm woke me up which was a little strange, 'cause I was used to waking up before it. And she had to let go of me to turn it off, and I was looking out the window to figure out what time it was and I realized it was still pretty dark outside.
Meghan said that she'd set her alarm for earlier so that we'd have more time in the morning which I thought was really nice of her, even though we couldn't do much more than snuggle together because Amy was sleeping and it would have been rude to wake her up.
I pushed Meghan's shirt up a little bit and rested my wing on her stomach, and she rubbed my neck and we cuddled until her alarm went off again, and after she'd turned it off, she kind of dozed off until the third time her alarm went off. Then I thought that I should get ready to go flying again and she said that she might as well get up and face the day, too, so we got out of bed and she went to the bathroom to get dressed and said that she'd walk out with me until I took off if I didn't mind and I thought that was really nice of her.
I had to go back to my room and get my flight gear and Meghan waited outside while I got it and then helped me get dressed in the bathroom. Then we went down to the boardwalk and she asked me where I was going to fly and I wasn't entirely sure. I told her last week I'd flown to Cloverdale and I'd pretty much seen everything around Kalamazoo that was a medium flying distance, and since I'd mostly gone north and east the last few times I'd probably go south and west, so I called the airplane directors and Dori said I could and to stay low until I crossed the 131 Highway. And then I kissed Meghan and took off. I climbed over all the buildings on campus and then circled around and waved at her before I looked at my watch and followed its directions southwest.
I could have kept up a perfectly straight course just looking at my watch but that was a bad habit to get into when there were other things to see on the ground, especially since it wouldn't work when I got back to Equestria, and if I got out of the habit of navigating properly I might find myself in trouble when I got back home. I knew that the watch got told where I was by satellites way up in the sky and there weren't any of them in Equestria.
Everything was pretty familiar until I crossed over the 94 Highway, and after that I was going off in a direction that I hadn't flown too much—I'd mostly stayed near the 131 highway when I went southwest.
There was a chain of lakes that were kind of along my path, and they made really good landmarks to follow. And a lot of fields below me, too, and some of them were being worked by big machines, some of them almost as big as locomotives. One wheat field was being mowed by a giant rotary mower, and it had a tube that was dumping grain into an open cart that was being towed next to it, while a whole bunch of dust was being spit out the back, and that was really neat to see. I guess it could sort out what it wanted to keep and what it didn't all inside the machine.
I could see the railroad tracks off to my right, and we weren't quite parallel. And I could see the grass airport that was near to them and then the little town that was called Lawton that had been my last stop one day when I was flying.
And when I got further southwest, I couldn't see the tracks any more. I crossed over an important road but I didn't know which one, since I was too high to read the signs along the side of it. I'd figured out that most roads just had signs at intersections but the more important roads had signs along their sides in case you forgot which road you were on.
I was starting to think about turning around, but there were some strange-shaped fields that I wanted to get a look at before I did. When I got closer it looked like it was caused by the water-spraying bridge that the farmers had, and their fields having odd, wide borders around them, too.
I was pretty hungry because I hadn't wanted to keep Meghan waiting so I hadn't had a snack before I left but there was still a can of anchovies in my vest pocket, so I turned around to be pointing back towards Kalamazoo but instead of flying I started to glide down. There was a lake ahead of me that I could reach and a big field next to it with lots of wrapped-up hay rolls, and that would be a good place to land and have a snack.
There were cows in the field so I had to watch where I landed, and the closer I got the bigger they looked. Cows were really big but Earth-cows were a little bit bigger than ours, I thought, and I'd never really paid much attention to them before.
They weren't too bothered by me—they put their heads up to look and then went back to grazing, and I opened up my anchovies and rested my wings a little bit and drank some water and a couple of the cows had gotten curious about what was in their pasture and were coming over my way and I didn't think that they'd be territorial or aggressive, but I didn't really want to stay and find out because not only were they a lot bigger but there were also a lot more of them, too.
When I saw Lawton off to my left I kind of thought about changing course that way a little bit in case an Amtrak went by, 'cause they were fun to watch since they were so fast, but that could add a few miles to my flight. So I looked at my watch to see what time it was, since I didn't want to miss lunch, and I had the time, so I followed a road that went north until it got to the railroad tracks and then I turned along them and looked behind me to see if there was an Amtrak coming that way but I didn't see any.
I stayed high as I crossed over the 94 Highway and I kept paying attention to if there were any Amtraks but I didn't hear any or see any.
I started losing altitude so I'd be low enough when I got to the 131 Highway bridge, and took one more look behind me as the track started to curve, but there weren't any Amtraks, which was kind of disappointing. And I called up Dori to tell her where I was, and that I was descending, and then I decided that since I hadn't heard or seen any Amtraks I'd fly straight from the 131 Highway back to campus, 'cause that was really easy to navigate.
When I finally landed on the boardwalk I was hungry and a little bit tired and I went up to our room and got undressed then before I took my shower I went downstairs and put my flight vest in the washing machine.
There wasn't anybody in the shower, so I took my time and when I was done I went downstairs and both of the dryers were being used and I could have waited but my flight vest would dry on its own if I hung it up, so I put it over my back and went upstairs and hung it over the back of my computer chair, then went to lunch.
I sat with Cedric and Leon and Trevor again and Trevor had a book with a bunch of Shakespeare's sonnets in it and he let me read some of them, and I said that I really missed having poetry class. And Cedric asked if I could read one that I liked out loud and Leon thought that was really funny, but I read his 94th sonnet, and then Cedric asked if he could have the book and Trevor said it was okay, so he looked through it and finally read the 33rd and it was kind of sad and I thought that he had the perfect voice for it and I think even Leon did too 'cause he didn't say anything after Cedric was done reading, and then Cedric said that it was his turn to read, and Leon said that he'd never learned how and I believed him until Cedric said that his butler probably fed him, too.
Leon said it was the maid that fed him and he was lucky that he had picked up how to eat on his own here at college or else he'd be starving right now and Cedric got a spoonful of mashed potatoes and pulled it back like a spoon catapult and said that he was always willing to help a friend.
So Leon took the book and read the 71st sonnet and that one was supposed to be sad, too, but the way he read it was kind of funny, especially since Cedric had just been mocking him.
On my way to astronomy class I was thinking about how I ought to find time to read more poetry, and maybe I could go to the library and get more poetry books. They had lots of books about everything there, so there must have been dozens and dozens of poetry books on the shelves.
Professor Miller started by telling us more about planets and how you couldn't see the ones that were at far-away stars directly, and how even the ones in the human solar system couldn't all be seen at first, and there was one called Pluto which had been discovered by math before it had been discovered by a telescope, although it wasn't a planet anymore because it was too small. And she started telling us how vector calculus could be used to figure out from the movement of stars (because the planet pulled the star along a little bit). And she also taught us a new math symbol which meant much much less, which was kind of neat.
And she showed us pictures of all the planets in order, and what we'd learned from them, like how humans had landed machines on Venus but they didn't last long because it was hot and rained sulfur. And Mars had what looked like river deltas and people thought that there was water on it then that there wasn't and then maybe there was and nobody was sure, and humans wanted to land there and get a better look at it like they had with the moon. It was really far away, though, and would take a really long time to get there and nobody was sure if astronauts could survive in a spaceship long enough to get there, or if they did, how they would get back.
Jupiter was big and had moons and weather like hurricanes that went on for centuries and that would be a kind of fun place to fly if it were possible. She told us that Galileo had discovered Jupiter's moons, and she showed us a picture of the four biggest ones and they were all different.
Saturn had big rings around it, and one of its moons had a giant crater in the side that she said looked like it had gotten hit by something that was not quite big enough to break it apart but almost and to me it looked a lot like the Death Star in Star Wars. And then we saw pictures of Uranus which had been taken by a space telescope, and it had a moon that had all sorts of jagged edges and Professor Miller said that it looked like this moon had been smashed apart and then fallen back together.
Neptune was blue and had weather too which was odd because it was so far away from the sun that it didn't have much energy and then we went on to Pluto how it had been made not a planet anymore because humans had discovered another, bigger planet that was further away called Eris, and then they found more and they decided that instead of calling them all planets they'd just say that they weren't really planets any more. And a couple of people in class booed that, and Professor Miller said that when they were all famous astronomers they could decide to make Pluto a planet again.
She told us about comets, too, and showed us pictures of one that had broken up and some of it had crashed into Jupiter, and said that just recently there had been a special spaceship which had landed on a comet, and she had pictures of that. It had had a little lander which was supposed to ride the comet but it had landed badly and couldn't get any sun for its leaves, so it ran out of electricity and later on they found out that it had fallen into a gulley.
And she told us that the Voyagers, which had been launched more than forty years ago, were now outside of what was considered their solar system and still going on, studying what was outside their solar system.
Then she told us the different categories of things in the solar system, which were the sun, the inner planets, the asteroids, the outer planets, the Kuiper Belt objects, and the Oort cloud which was where the comets came from, and then she passed out our homework.
When I was done with class I went back to our room and it was a really nice day outside and Peggy wasn't there, so I took my Bible and flew to a tree in front of Trowbridge and read Malachi which was the last book of the Old Testament.
And it was a vision that Malachi had and God said how much He loved Israel and how they didn't return His love like they should, and He warned the priests that they'd tried to cheat Him by giving Him bad offerings, and that the people were always complaining, and they thought that they could get away with being bad and He wouldn't notice but He had. So then some people got together and wrote a scroll while He watched, and then at the very end He said that He was going to send Elijah to them, and I remembered him from before.
It was very strange to be done with the Old Testament and I guess I kind of knew who God was now, and so I sat on my branch and thought about Him. I think it would have been a little bit easier to understand if the books had all been in order, because even though Liz had showed me how they weren't and explained it to me, I thought there was a little bit less use in a book that you couldn't figure out on your own. But I guess that when they'd gathered up all the writings and visions and prophecies and psalms and proverbs that everyone had, they all knew who God was so they thought it would be best to arrange it by theme.
So I was still thinking when I heard Peggy and she was under my tree so I flew down and nuzzled her hip and she said that she'd seen me in the tree from our window. And we walked back to our room and she told me that in her art class they'd watched a movie called Koyaanisqatsi, which was a very strange word that she had to spell for me. The professor had told her that it was a Hopi word and it meant a life out of balance but it could also mean a life of moral corruption and turmoil, which was kind of funny because that's what God was complaining about, too.
I asked her if she wanted to go to dinner early 'cause I'd missed it last Thursday since we'd been catching Pokemons, and maybe that was why I hadn't been quick enough to dodge Stellan and gotten my knee bashed, and she said that we could. But we didn't want to go too early or else all that would be left was what hadn't gotten eaten at lunch, so we sat in the room with our door open in case anybody wanted to come by and then Peggy helped me hang up my picture of the changing tree and the degree I'd gotten for flying in a wind tunnel and she thought that was really funny and that I was probably the only student who already had a diploma.
We were too early for Sean and Christine, and I'd already finished eating when they finally arrived. Peggy said that she'd stay but I had to go so that I wouldn't miss my meeting.
So I got my glaive and went to Liz's office and we talked about the Bible and I kind of thought that maybe God hadn't quite figured out people yet and Liz said that was kind of an interesting thought. Some of my year-mates had had their first foals and they all said that being a mother was a lot different than they thought it would be and Liz said that was an interesting interpretation and she wasn't sure if I was right but she wasn't sure I was wrong, either.
She also said that some people thought that God was too vengeful and there had been times that I thought so, too, but it was important to follow rules even if you didn't always understand why they were rules because they'd usually been figured out by somepony older and wiser, and if you didn't follow the rules you might not be the only one killed. So sometimes He had to be harsh and His people were like foals that didn't understand why.
I went to fighting practice next and warmed up with my glaive before switching to a padded one. This time I was more alert and I didn't get hit in the leg. And I'd started to get pretty good at figuring out what Stellan was going to do, so the two of us had some pretty good mock-battles, and after a while he decided to change things up a bit and I got to fight with Karla, who had a very different style. She was more defensive but when she moved in for an attack she was really fast, and so I had to be careful. She was shorter than he was, too, and that changed things, and she'd also give more ground up before pressing her counterattack.
That was one thing that usually gave us the advantage because unicorns especially didn't want to lose their cities so in the past they'd fought to defend them even when it would have been smarter to give up and regroup somewhere else. Earth ponies didn't like losing land, either, but they were more sensible and would retreat when they were outnumbered and get their land back later, and back in the tribal days one of our iles had been completely wiped out because they'd all been getting fat on the farmland they'd just taken and then the earth ponies caught them still on the ground which I guess was stupid of them, but I guess they'd thought that since all the earth ponies had run off they weren't going to come back.
Between the long flight in the morning and then fighting practice I was pretty tired by the time I flew back to my room, and I realized that I hadn't gotten a chance to meet with Sean and go over our math homework at all, so I sent him a telephone telegram and we agreed that we could do it at lunch tomorrow. Peggy wasn't there which was a little bit unusual, and she didn't come back until I was already in bed.
She said that she'd been busy with things but she wouldn't tell me what, and then she said that we were going to have dinner in the lounge for my birthday and we were going to get pizza and I thought that was really nice of her and I said that she didn't have to but she said that she wanted to, and a birthday was a fun excuse for a party.
Peggy said that Christine had wanted it to be more of a surprise but then they were worried I might fly off somewhere and we'd have a surprise party without me which would be disappointing for everyone.
She got in her sleeping clothes but didn't go to bed right away, because she said that she still had to talk to some of her friends on Facebook, and I curled up in my bed and I was still kind of awake when she finally closed her computer and got in bed, 'cause I was looking forward to tomorrow.
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7746825 The best tasting stuff gives you the worst gas. I can testify.
Some humans would also give up so much land that the enemy gets exhausted trying to catch them and then Winter do them in. =P
Good thing humans can't change weather like the pegasuses. :V
The whole unicorn racism thing gets tiring sometimes, I'll admit.
I have the Koyaanisqatsi DVD.
It's also in my minitablet.
The flying sequence looks like modern drone footage.
Is that Surveyor 3 blowing up at the end?
SG would like the clouds but wonder why they were so fast.
"Water-spraying bridges" I'll have to tease my farmer friends about that.
So she finally reached the end of the Old Testament. I can't wait to see what Silver Glow thinks of Jesus.
It always seems weirdly incongruous when Silver talks about the pony wars, because you can't picture these adorable pastel-colored fuzzballs actually killing each other rather than cuddling all day.
Given the affection Silver has for humans, I wonder if she has the same reflex when reading about our wars.
"Those cuddly bipeds did what?
"
I wonder which reason there is for this chain of lakes. Ive seen them formed from flooded disbanded runways and railways, quarries, open cast workings, but the most spectacular from valleys where Victorian engineers have just kept building mills, lodges, ponds and reservoirs. The village I lived in most of my life had two water powered mills and a steam powered mill, and the hamlet at the top of the road had a water/steam powered mill also. Now the lodges are filled in, dams broken etc as grid power and gas lines have been installed.
For the planet perturbation thing, I keep trying to work out teh epicycle thing, as in this is the conic section base orbit for this planet, what summed conic section orbit would give the perturbation observed, etc? Then try and work ut at how relativity bends the plane the conic section is on, which itself is already angular offset for elipticity, to try and model the system more accurately?
Taking weapons to Bible class? Silver really should go to one of the DnD tabletop meets, she gets extra XP for costume.
But, if Malachi is the end of the Old Testament, where was Revelations this time?
Becareful when thinking of a Suprise birthday party, you might just get more than you think.
As long as someone doesnt put Silvers pillowcase as a table centre piece, I think they should be ok.
If I remember well, one of the big problem with landing on Venus (and maybe THE problem) is the overwelming athmospheric pressure.
Shouldn't you use "an" instead of "a"?
7747369
"Revelations" is the last book of the New Testament. Silver Glow's got a lot of books to go before she gets to that one.
7747445
Pressure is easy, its only 90 bar. Camerons Mariana Trench dive was done with essentially a heavily modified surfboard, foam filled composite. Thats well over a Thousand bar. the problem on Venus is the Temperature, almost 500C Even high temperature semiconductors only go up to about 280 C or so before failing, so the lifetime of the probe is given by how long before the battiers fail due to teh heat, after having to survive months of cryogenic deep space getting there, and before the heat takes out the electronics. Im not sure if the Veneras were successful because they actually use vacuum tubes/valves taken from radar fuzes on artillery shells and so could run much hotter. Now if an electrode design was used that didnt emit electrons below 500C or better, you could build electronics that were effectively operating at room temeprature even on Venus. Your next problem then is a dense atmosphere and no generator. I have no idea if a small wind turbogenerator or even a flailing flag version would work.
If you dont like the idea of all your digital electronics being worthless so dont want to use tube electronics instead, theres always clockwork, which also works because iron remains magnetic up to 750C, and so you can Radio Transmit clockwork information, even without needing to cut a phonograph and float it up on a balloon to be picked up by a sub orbital diver etc.
7747369
Epicycles is what you get when you sit still in one place on Earth and plot the movement of a planet through the sky. So it's including the movement of the planet and the movement of the Earth. (Relativity's not going to seriously affect epicycles - you'd need equipment a bit more precise than the Mk. I Eyeball to spot relativistic corrections in planetary motions)
Can't wait to read about Silver's Bday. I'm sure it will easily be a great one. This is her first one while on earth.
missing the word 'that' just before 'were'
out our
thought, and then you repeat that mistake in the same paragraph
SG becomes first instrument-rated pegasus.
7748534 Remembering that IFR stands for "I Follow roads."
7746844
7746888
If you've got the land, that's a brilliant strategy. Don't forget to burn everything that the enemy might be able to use while you're fighting your retreating battle.
(I actually watched a video of the retreat from Russia that was filmed by a German soldier. In the spring, everything was mud, and the only things that were moving where pack animals and soldiers. The tanks and trucks were up to their axles in mud and weren't going anywhere.)
That would put a whole new spin on military tactics. And probably why people are working for treaties on weather modification now, rather than waiting until somebody actually figures out how to do it and then uses it for evil.
7746948
I've got the soundtrack on CD, but not the movie, sadly. Maybe I'll order it and the other two from Amazon this year, if I can get them at a reasonable price. We legit watched them in my art appreciation class.
I'd assume it's a helicopter, and possibly sped up. It's pretty amazing to think that you or I can easily afford a camera that's as good or better than what they were shooting movies on 20 years ago.
Heh, yeah, unless Equestria has also figured out that photography trick (and now I'm totally blanking on what it's called).
7747271
Well, that's what they are.
He was way cool.
7747296
I know, right? You can be sure all her friends have trouble wrapping their heads around that, too.
Probably to an extent, especially since we're still doing it to each other for no apparent reason, as far as she knows.
Daetrin covered how ponies view war in a blog (he wrote a whole series of them, in fact, that are well worth reading); the TL;DR version is that if ponies go to war they will attempt to win as thoroughly and quickly as possible, because when you're a prey animal every fight is a fight to the death.
7747369
In Michigan, "the glaciers did it" is almost always the reason.
It's always good to have weapon at hand for theological debates
As for Revelation, that's at the end of the New Testament.
Silver Glow might show up in her birthday suit
In a college, that's very much a possibility.
I'm trying to remember, but the probes that landed there, was their lifetime measured in days or hours on the surface?
In one of Randall Monroe's What Ifs, the question was asked about flying airplanes on other planets. Turns out Venus would be easy, for a short period of time, since the dense atmosphere would keep the airplane aloft. Until it dissolved from the atmosphere, of course. Then you'd have a problem.
7747445
Also, the very hot, very corrosive atmosphere. It's really not a place you'd want to visit.
Yes, I should have. Correction made!
7747767
First and only. Still, nothing like a birthday party with college friends.
7748088
Corrections made; thank you!
7748534
She could probably get the rating, but still not be allowed to fly in the clouds, because no transponder.
7748720
That's why I keep mixing up IFR and VFR, because you have to see roads to follow them.
7761747
The Veneras lasted only hours. The Soviet Union is the only country to ever successfully land on Venus. The USA is the only country to successfully land on Mars and Titan and send a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter. The USA, The Soviet Union, and China are the only countries to successfully land on Luna. Only the USA has sent humans beyond Low Earth-Orbit and land humans on another world.
7761805
Now I'm picturing Princess Luna carrying a space probe on her back. "Is this yours?"
I was actually just reading about the Eastern Front in World War II last night. One of the (many) things that really hampered the Germans was that Hitler had the same attitude as the unicorns, while the Russians were more like the earth ponies. Apparently, especially later, it put a lot of German units in bad positions because they weren't allowed to react properly to changing battlefield conditions. Stalingrad was pretty much the penultimate example of this.
7780130
I'd like to see an overlapping dimensions fic where Luna does come to Earth to give people back all their lunar probes. Maybe that's been done before, I dunno.
7880845
In WWI as well--the Germans attacked a French town knowing full well that the French would fight to the last man to defend it . . . the German strategy was to hope that the French ran out of men before they did. Apparently in WWI, Zap Brannigan's strategy of throwing wave after wave of his own men at it actually was the military strategy.
Unusually high number of errors in this chapter.
8353642
Corrections made; thank you!
Yknow, I keep forgetting how authority focused your ponies are. It’s almost disturbing sometimes.
A minor point, but I don't think Silver would consider it "our" solar system. (You wanted another four-years-late correction, right?)
10552009
Ooh, that’s a hard maybe. Probably, since she typically keeps referring to how people do things on Earth, she would refer to it as ‘their.’
Correction made, thank you!
Princess Twilight Sparkle: Oh, you think I've been letting science ponies just sit around these last 10 months? Mare, puh-leeze. We got laser beams and space ships and transporters and all sorts of crazy shit!
Me: What a strange daydream. *continues reading*
Either one of our greatest and most likely longest lasting accomplishments, or our greatest folly, if found by malevolent beings, cause we included a return address. Fucking hippies, man (jk).
11224663
The idea of what pony magic could do with imported human tech is kind of terrifying. And awesome.
That’s future humanity’s problem
Maybe by then we’ll have a functioning
democracyplanetary defense system.Also, spelling correction made, thank you! If you’ve been skimming through the comments, you’ll know previous readers found plenty, but obviously not all of ‘em.
I love the dynamic they have with the wealth/street cred thing, it's hilarious.
I imagine that it's planned that way. Keeps the priests' positions stable. It's like how an IT guy can take his entire company hostage by mere fact that he knows the system, and nobody else does, so you'd better not fire him. (My company has one of those.)
11354687
Leon's from a rich suburb and likes to downplay it. Cedric is more from the 'hood.
Leon didn't really have that much hired help in his house, but he's leaning into it because why not?
I don't know if it was intended to be that way, or if that's how it just happened over centuries of tradition. Like, IIRC the OT has the priests baked in, even having instructions on what they're supposed to wear.
Knowing the Red Spot on Jupiter is a storm, I looked it up, and it's predicted that it'll go away in about 20 years, and that kind of saddens me.
11703376
That is sad. I don't know how long it's even been there--pretty sure for all of my life anyway.
[looked it up, and it's been there since at least 1831, possibly longer]