Interlude: ESA Flight Six
Flames rushed around the nosecone of the rapidly descending rocket ship, filling the solitary porthole with red and orange light. Gravity hauled down hard on the pilot’s body, pulling hard enough to make the straps holding her to the acceleration couch creak alarmingly. Loud claxons filled the capsule interior with noise, almost enough to drown out the chaotic shouting in her ears.
“Pull up, Dash, pull up!”
“Fire yer rockets, Dash, maybe you can steer-“
“No! Dash is going too fast already, any more speed and-“
“Thirty thousand and falling! Speed over one thousand meters per second! That’s faster than anything on the way up!”
The pilot managed to make herself heard. “Controls not responding! The stick’s dead! I repeat, I have no control over the craft!”
“Twenty-five thousand and falling!”
The ship gave a little lurch.
“Rainbow Dash, your main parachute’s just blown up!”
“Computer estimates thirty seconds to impact!”
“Twilight, can’t you teleport her outta there?”
“I wish I could, but she’s too far away and moving too fast and there’s not room in the capsule for both-“
“Twenty thousand and falling! Heat warnings on radial parachutes one, three, two and four!”
The pilot wanted the voices to stop. They were all her friends, and they were all frightened and panicking, and she wanted to make it stop and she couldn’t. She couldn’t even talk anymore; the forces on the ship pulled her so hard against the straps that they were digging in even through her pressure suit. She could barely breathe, and a blackness at the edge of her vision she normally only noticed when maneuvering at rainboom speeds was creeping forward bit by bit.
And despite all this, she had enough presence of mind to think:
Relighting the engine is no-go. I can’t slow myself down like that, and speed is what’s going to kill me, not angle of descent. It’s too late to flip the ship over anyway.
Air gets a lot thicker from fifteen thousand feet on down, and I’ll slow down in a hurry. I might slow down enough to break out of the slipstream and pull the nose up to slow down more. Once I get below three hundred meters per second I can fire the remaining parachutes, all ten of ‘em, and if they don’t work I’m dead anyway.
If I were flying by myself I could survive a direct impact of four hundred meters per second. I’ve done it before. The pressure cone of my sonic rainboom provides a good shock absorber, thank you pegasus magic. But it’s too late to bail out now.
So, keep pulling the nose up, keep the hoof on the parachute release, and don’t black out. That’s all I can do.
“Peak speed twelve-twenty-two meters per second! Now below eight hundred meters per second!”
“Altitude ten thousand and falling! Fifteen seconds to impact!”
“Dash, you have to hit the parachutes at a thousand meters, even if they red-light! Can you hear me-“
“Seven hundred meters at six thousand altitude!”
“Ten seconds!”
“Dashie, please say something!”
“Five hundred meters at four thousand altitude!”
“Rainbow Dash!”
“RAINBOW DASH!”
“DASH, WAKE UP!!”
Rainbow Dash blinked, shook her head, and took a deep, shuddering breath. She was in the capsule of a rocket, but not that capsule, not that rocket, and not about to plow into the Griffon Sea. That had been weeks ago… and about two thirds of all the nights since.
“Baltimare, this is Six,” she said. “Receiving you. What’s up?”
“Six, we want you to try out some of the in-flight rations and record a report about eating in space,” the voice of Applejack drawled through the headphones of Dash’s flight suit. “Once that’s done, we want you to suit back up in preparation for the main mission task. All right?”
“Suits me fine, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash replied. “What’s to eat?”
“Dunno,” Applejack replied. “Pinkie made all the rations, but she’s not here.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sighing, Rainbow Dash unbuckled herself from the flight seat, swung the back down, and opened one of the storage compartments for a dehydrated meal. Earlier she’d tested the brand-new bathroom modifications to the otherwise standard Cherry’s Rocket Parts capsule she was in, and reported her less than satisfaction. Among other things, the lingering smell was… unappetizing.
Rainbow Dash found the dehydrated food supplies and drew out a foil packet with an extra wrapper taped to the side. The stick-on label said, in Pinkie’s hoofwriting, Alfalfa curry with rice and chocolate chowpatty with icing. And in smaller print: Sorry it’s not a cupcake, but Twilight says no crumbs in the spacecraft! – P. P.
Eh, whatever.
Dash unwrapped the flatbread (which wasn’t dehydrated), used the attached tube to add icing (trickier than expected in free-fall, but doable), and ate it first. She then attached the entrée packet to the magic water spigot and let the teleported hot water do its thing while she thought about how crazy things had been since the last time she’d been in a rocket.
Equestria Space Agency’s Flight Five had ended with Dash triggering the remaining parachutes on the ship three seconds before she would have hit the ocean at just under the speed of sound. The sudden deceleration knocked her unconscious instantly, and she’d spent the following week in the hospital recovering from a fractured collarbone and two cracked ribs. Fortunately pegasi heal fast, allowing her to get back to her busy schedule of training with the Wonderbolts, saving Equestria from monsters and unfriendly ponies, and oh yeah, her sideline as courageous rocket jock pony.
Except it hadn’t been as easy for the others as it had been for Rainbow Dash. All she had to deal with was the nightmares. Princess Luna prevented them from going beyond replays of memory, and she had offered to get rid of them completely, but Rainbow Dash wanted the reminder of just how serious this rocket pilot thing really was. The other ponies, on the other hand, had all had it much, much worse.
She and the girls had never been able to devote their full attention to the space program. Fluttershy had her animals, and Pinkie Pie had work and party planning, and neither one liked the horrible scare Flight Five had put into them. They were out, done, period, end of discussion. Applejack and Rarity were still willing to help, but both had business responsibilities heavier than Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. With fall coming on, the harvest at Sweet Apple Acres and the fall fashion season pulled both of them away for days at a time. All four of those ponies walked around in a state of depression, feeling guilty at not being there for Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, feeling afraid that the next close call would be more than a close call, feeling distracted and upset and, as Pinkie put it, anti-smile.
And Twilight Sparkle…
… well, let’s be honest, the egghead had cracked. The evening of the flight, and the day after, she’d been just functional enough to explain to the press that setbacks were only setbacks and that getting the pilot back alive was the important thing. And then, once the reporters had all gone home, she’d returned to Ponyville, gone to her bedroom in the crystal castle, and quietly folded in on herself for a week and a half.
Starlight Glimmer and Spike managed to drag her out of bed every day to come to the hospital to visit Rainbow Dash, and Dash, being glad of the company, hadn’t noticed just how much of a basket case her friend was at the time or how short the visits were. After she’d been cleared for release and limited Wonderbolts workouts, Dash had spent a few days catching up on her non-astromare life, cleaning her home, helping Tank choose a spot for his coming hibernation, and of course giving interviews and fan appearances, because hey, you didn't let your supporters down, right?
On the sixteenth day after Flight Five she visited Twilight Sparkle… and saw just how bad things were.
Rainbow Dash, being the take-charge mare she knew she was, dragged Twilight out of her book fort and into her lab, stuck her in front of a chalkboard, and told her to get back to work being a rocket scientist. That was the thing: if you crash, get back up and do it again. You didn’t let the fear rule you. You faced down the fear.
And she understood exactly what the fear was. Dash hadn’t really been afraid during the almost-crash- she'd been too busy and distracted to be afraid - but when she woke in the hospital she’d been horrified to realize just how close she’d come. Hence the flashback nightmares, which thank Faust hadn’t happened while she was awake. But she’d come that close to meeting her maker several times before. And she’d always got back up and tried it again, and again, until she got it right. Until she got over the fear.
Of course, in order to get over this particular fear, Rainbow Dash needed a new rocket, which meant getting her genius buddy out of her nervous breakdown. This had taken much of another two weeks, during which time the whole thing with Flim and Flam had cropped up. Twilight had overreacted, and Celestia had tried to step in to fix everything, and gradually Twilight had pulled herself together by using outrage at the television scam to overcome fear of failure and fear of loss of a friend.
Dash, Spike and Starlight Glimmer had worked out a routine; the day's news about Flim and Flam’s attempts to regain their television patent was kept from Twilight until she showed signs of funk during a space-related discussion. Then assistant or student would bring in the news, Twilight would get angry, and after a few minutes she would be centered and on top of things again.
Fluttershy said this wasn’t healthy, but Dash didn’t care. All she cared about was, it worked. The more Twilight was functional, the more functional she became. By the time the Flim-Flams aired their newsreel about CSP Mission Nine, Twilight Sparkle was out of her anxiety paralysis, kicking flank and taking names- or maybe kicking chalk and taking numbers, or however geeks do it.
But in the meantime, with Twilight still shell-shocked and the other girls unmotivated, Rainbow Dash became the driving force of the Equestrian space effort. Her top priority: going through every single aspect of Flight Five and finding absolutely everything that went wrong.
She began the investigation with the obvious point; Pilot Error. She’d nosed over too far trying to get a horizontal trajectory and, instead, had kept herself too low. On the other hand, according to Twilight, that had ended up being a good thing in a way. Dash had shut down the engine with ten percent fuel remaining when the first heat warnings and plasma streamers appeared during ascent. If she’d burned all the fuel, she’d probably have still been supersonic when the ship reached the ocean, and the parachutes would have failed.
Of course she should have flipped the ship immediately, thirty-five miles above the ground, instead of hanging on too long hoping for a second burn. That was inexcusable, but it revealed another problem: there was nopony in any position to make the final call on the ground. ESA’s informal buddy system had all the flaws of rule-by-consensus, and during a flight you needed clear, rapid decision-making- something consensus usually didn’t do. Somepony had to be In Charge, and it was obvious that Twilight Sparkle was going to be that pony, what with the alicorn princess thing, the Element of Magic thing, and oh yes the Smarter Than Everypony Else Combined Thing.
Rainbow Dash was fine with that. She still had confidence in herself, but each nighttime repeat of the flight was a reminder that she needed somepony to put on the brakes when she went too far. For that job she trusted nopony more than Twilight Sparkle.
This led into another point- comm discipline. Rainbow Dash, with extreme reluctance, had asked the changelings for a recording of CSP Mission Six's comms from the capsule point of view. She’d then played the recording against a recording of ESA Flight Five for the others. The differences couldn’t be plainer. The ESA recording was confused, distracting, worse than useless. The CSP recording, though it had its fear, was simple, to the point, clear, and above all calm.
Rainbow Dash then asked which recording they’d rather be stuck in a closet listening to while trying to thread an electrically charged needle. Nopony answered; the point was made, and ESA adopted CSP’s flight communications protocols for all future flights.
Other ideas got kicked around. Dash’s explanation of the dire and pressing need for the pressure suits to be redesigned for removal and re-donning in flight and to cope with, er, bathroom accidents during launch and descent left the other ponies blushing, laughing, or both. Starlight Glimmer proposed various methods of in-flight rescue and retrieval of pilots in case of disaster, and that got discussed for most of an afternoon.
Finally Twilight Sparkle brought up the thing that had caused her mental collapse: rocket design. Flight Five's configuration had been her idea, her attempt to show that she was smarter than Queen Chrysalis. The flight attempted to be a single-stage-to-space, one hundred percent retrievable rocket, and that extra weight had dragged the rocket down faster than it went up, with almost disastrous consequences. Flight Five had proved beyond all doubt that, if such a thing was ever going to work, the technology wasn’t there yet.
It took days to get Twilight to work past blaming herself for the mission failure and to focus on planning the next mission.
And the next mission, at this point, was obvious: orbit.
Cherry Berry, flying for Chrysalis and her brood, had come within a donkey’s spit of making orbit. The next time she or Chrysalis went up, they’d fix that shortcoming. Of course, the next time anypony at all used anything similar to the Mission Nine rocket design, they would make orbit if they wanted to. That, Applejack had argued, could be them, if they were quick about it.
Rainbow Dash had vetoed that. Copying Mission Nine would be just that- copying, following, like a little sister mimicking a big sister. Everypony knew Cherry Berry should have had the honor of first in orbit except for her mission requirements holding her back. The ESA would get no credit for first orbit if they did it the CSP way, but they would get a lot of disrespect for being copycats.
Of course, whatever rocket they used would end up being very close to CSP Mission Nine anyway. They didn't have time to make a new design. The Equestrian Space Agency was, by unavoidable necessity, a part-time thing. Twilight Sparkle and her friends remained Equestria’s last line of defense against monster attack and its first line of defense against friendship problems. Each of them, even Spike, had things in their life that needed doing that had nothing to do with spaceflight. Everything they’d accomplished had been done, to be blunt, in their spare time. Otherwise, Dash knew for a fact, they’d have left the changelings in their dust.
And by mid-fall the ESA would basically shut down for the winter. There was too much for each of them to do back home. Nightmare Night, the Running of the Leaves and Winter Ramp-Up, the last harvests, and all sorts of community responsibilities were calling them back to Ponyville. Time was short for getting any new mission off the ground before the end of the year- and they couldn't spare any time to make an orbit-capable ship that wasn't basically CSP-9 with the Royal Sisters flag painted on the side.
So, said Dash at the planning meeting, since they were stuck using the changeling's rocket design, they needed something else they could do once they got into orbit to prove they had jumped ahead in the space race- something nopony else could do without ESA’s help.
Also, said Twilight, the ESA program needed time to integrate new safety measures. They also needed a new backup pilot, since Fluttershy (who’d never been interested in actually flying) was all the way out now. Spitfire and A. K. Yearling, both listed as reserve backup pilots, were too busy in their normal lives to put in the training a backup pilot needed. And, finally, Twilight insisted there would be no flights until they had some way, any way, of rescuing a pilot in flight, or stranded in orbit, or whatever.
That was when Starlight Glimmer had the idea.
And now, two days after Cherry Berry had achieved precisely one lap of the planet, and several hours into a much longer flight than the changelings had dared, that idea was about to be put into action.
Rainbow Dash made some offhand comments about the food (spicy but good, a bit mushy though, and who cares about crumbs?), disposed of the wrappers, and worked her way back into the new-design pressure suit. Rarity’s redesign was much easier to get into and out of than the original, but the bathroom arrangements while it was on were, as Rarity herself admitted, undignified. Dash had a better word: gross.
The new design had an extra feature- a totally redesigned backpack, with the life support systems miniaturized to make room for the thing that would put the ESA firmly in the lead in the race to the moon.
“Baltimare, this is Six,” Rainbow Dash said, twisting her helmet into place. “Suit on, performing pressure checks now.”
“Baltimare copies,” Applejack said. “You are go for EVA at your discretion.”
“Roger that, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash replied. The HUD projected on the inside of her helmet, including a tiny duplicate of the magic nav-ball used for steering the rocket, reported green lights on suit pressure. No air lost, all systems go. Technically she could survive for days in the suit, thanks to the water supply available from a straw at her cheek, so long as she could stand the smell and feel of her own poop. Not that Dash intended to make that endurance test if she had any choice at all.
Besides, the pressure suit bound her wings to her sides, and a pegasus who can’t move her wings is a supremely uncomfortable pegasus. Now that she could get into and out of the pressure suit as she pleased, she intended to stay out of it whenever she could get away with it.
Unfortunately, she thought as she hit the switch to reverse the magical air supply and empty the cabin of air, this isn’t one of those times.
“Baltimare, this is Six.”
“Go ahead, Six.”
“Cabin pressure is at zero. I’m going out for a walk. I may be a little while.”
“Copy, Six.”
There was, in case of dire emergency, a single lever which could be used to permanently and thoroughly open the hatch. If you wanted to close the hatch again afterwards, you had to use a separate, rather complicated system. At first Rainbow Dash had hated it, but she’d come to understand the logic; this door was not one you wanted to take any chance whatever of just coming open by itself.
The tricky bit was getting the hatch closed behind her without falling off. There were four hoofrails on the exterior of the capsule; two rungs below the hatch and one on either side of it. Aside from those, there wasn’t any place to hold onto the ship, and those four rails were none too large, especially when you had to hold on with hooves wrapped in a pressure suit. To make things even better, the physics of free-fall meant that Rainbow Dash’s body and limbs wanted to keep going in whatever direction she’d moved them last, taking the rest of her with them. To her it felt a bit like the rocket was actively trying to shake her off, even though the engine was shut down and nothing was moving but herself.
Eventually she got the hatch closed, got a grip on the capsule exterior with all four limbs, and waited until her body was motionless in relation to the ship. Only then did she say, “Baltimare, I’m outside the capsule now, ready to step off the welcome mat.”
“Copy, Six,” Applejack replied. “You’re go to release the craft in your own time.”
Now came the one truly scary part, the one thing Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer hadn’t been able to think their way around. Experiments with a backup tether had ended with first Rainbow Dash and then Princess Cadance (the new backup pilot after the official merger of ESA and the Crystal Empire space program) tangled in a cat’s cradle in the training bay. If the thrusters on the new, redesigned space suit backpack failed to activate, or if they misfired in any way, Dash would probably have to hope that, someday, somehow, she and the capsule drifted close enough together again to grab it.
Rainbow Dash released one foreleg from its grip and turned to look back at the world below her. She was over the ocean, of course. A horrible little voice in the back of her mind said: How’d you like to plummet into that in a ball of fire, this time without a rocket or parachutes?
No. You work through the fear. You don’t let it control you.
Rainbow Dash straightened her body, made sure it was still, and then slowly, carefully, released her grip on the capsule.
Her body drifted very, very slowly away. She could still reach with her hooves for a hold if she absolutely needed to, but in about ten seconds that wouldn’t be true anymore.
“Activating thruster pack,” Rainbow Dash said. This required moving her elbows into a certain position and holding it for a full second, which commanded the backpack to extend two controls on long armrests. The stick under her left hoof would provide lateral, forward and backward thrust; the one under her right hoof would control thrust up and down and left and right yaw. Each of the thrusters gave a quick burst of test-fire, then a couple more bursts to bring her back stationary in relationship with the capsule.
“Thruster check all green,” Rainbow Dash reported. “I’m going to back away from the ship now.” She pulled back slightly on the left joystick, and thrusters pushed her away from the craft. She released her pressure, and the thrusters cut off. She nudged forward for a moment, and the capsule almost, but not quite, stopped falling away from her. “Hey, this is pretty neat,” she said. “It’s almost like really flying!”
“Six, Baltimare,” Applejack said calmly. “We’re watching you down here on the big screen, and it all looks good. Twilight wants you to move one hundred meters away from the craft, stop, and then return to the hatch. Y’got that?”
“Affirmative, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash said. “Copy one hundred meters away and return to hatch.” She looked at the ship. She was already about ten meters out and drifting very slowly further… but that drift was towards the planet. She wasn’t happy with that direction. Instead she kicked the left joystick to her right and held it for a bit, flying sideways down the stubby length of the orbiter and past the final stage engine. Satisfied, she released the thruster and let momentum do the work for about a minute or so.
“Okay, Six, that’s good,” Applejack finally said. “Now get on back.”
Rainbow Dash pushed the left joystick to the left for what she guessed was about as long as she’d held it right, cancelling out her momentum. Unfortunately her helmet’s peripheral vision, limited as it was, wouldn’t let her see the rocket anymore. She used the right stick to roll left, then nulled the roll as her heads-up display added a little pink square around the orbiter… which was farther away than she’d expected.
Eh, no big, she thought. I’ve still got massive amounts of charge in the mana battery. Facing the orbiter, she thrust forward for a bit, holding the thrust quite a bit longer for the return trip.
A bit too long, as it happened.
“Six, we’re showin’ you at five meters per second relative velocity,” Applejack said, her drawl speeding up with urgency. “Please slow ‘er down a bit.”
Dash’s hoof was already on the control and counterthrusting, but not soon enough. Fortunately, or not depending on your point of view, she hadn’t been precisely aimed at the orbiter. Very close, but not precisely.
Still going more than a meter per second in relation to the spaceship, Rainbow Dash’s left rear hoof clipped the edge of the fuel tank, sending her spinning plot over teakettle. The thruster systems, sensing the release of the controls and the motion of the pilot’s arms, retracted and shut down, allowing her to tumble and spin freely. “WHOOOOOA! NOT COOL!”
“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight Sparkle’s voice shouted over the comm link. “Are you all right? Suit integrity and systems check!”
“Wha? Who?” Rainbow Dash pulled her mind from the universe tumbling around her and focused on the little lights in the heads-up display. “Twilight, we talked about comm discipline, remember? Let Applejack do the-“
“SUIT SYSTEMS CHECK!”
Rainbow Dash reached a hoof up to rub her ringing ears, then groaned when it bumped the side of her helmet. “Right, right,” she said. “All readouts show green, air pressure good. No leaks, nothing broken, not even my hoof.” She returned her focus to the outside world and added, “I’m in one heck of a tumble, though, and I’ve lost sight of the ship. Gimme a minute to fix that.”
A moment later she had the thrusters activated again, and their automatic startup routine quickly stopped her tumble and stabilized her. She was still drifting, but at least now she had an orientation. “Okay, roll stopped,” she said. “Attempting to reacquire spaceship.”
“Use the targeting function,” Twilight said. “Your suit has a new map display. Activate it and it should show the ship. Just like in training.”
“You mean, the same training where we practiced comm discipline, Baltimare?” Dash replied.
“Will you… urgh! Yes, Six, that training!”
Rainbow Dash smiled inside her space suit. Angry Twilight was much better than worried freakout Twilight or depressed guilt-tripping Twilight. Angry Twilight could get things done, and Twilight seldom stayed angry for long. Using the HUD controls required deactivating the thrusters for a moment, but so long as she didn’t thrash around she would remain stable. She reached to her chest, opened the lid of the control box, and activated the map HUD, selected the icon for the orbiter, and set it as her target.
A pink ring appeared on the nav-ball, towards the left lower edge of the visible half, As Rainbow Dash reactivated the thrusters and reoriented herself, the pink ring moved gradually to the center of the ball, overlaying a retrograde marker. The velocity readout, instead of showing orbital speed, now showed a velocity of 0.9 meters per second relative to target.
Rainbow Dash’s smile vanished as she looked at the ship. “Baltimare, can you see the ship now?” she said. “When I clipped the ship going past I set it to tumbling slowly. Getting in is going to be a pain.” The tumble wasn’t very fast, but it didn't need to be. Now she’d have to grab onto a moving object and hold on long enough to get the hatch open…
… a tricky proposition when your species doesn’t have any digits at all on their limbs, doubly so when those limbs are wrapped in a heavily padded, pressurized suit.
“We see it,” Twilight said, belatedly adding, “Six.” Deep breath. “We’re going to have to be careful about keeping relative speed slow when near the spacecraft. For now, though, don’t worry about anything else except getting back into the ship.”
“Six copies, Baltimare,” Rainbow Dash said. She reactivated the thrusters, moving forward gingerly, reversing thrust as she approached the ship. She found herself drifting left, counterthrusted, and discovered herself rushing right three times as fast. She counterthrusted yet again, but couldn’t get the drift precisely stopped. Thrust, counterthrust, counter-counterthrust, and still drifting.
And now, drifting down as well. She thrusted up, then right again, then left, then right, then down. None of the maneuvers added up to holding still.
“Baltimare, Six,” Rainbow Dash growls, “this is just stupid! I can’t null out my drift! These controls aren’t precise enough!” She found herself getting too close to the wrong side of the ship as it slowly tumbled, and she thrust away, backing off. This caused a strong drift left, and she overcorrected right, sending her in front of the ship and up. Two more overcorrections later she was moving away from the ship at close to a meter per second.
“Use the navball!” Twilight insisted. “Prograde and retrograde markers! Start by matching velocity with the ship, then keep centered on the target until you get close! Just like training!”
In training Rainbow Dash had had the orientation of the training bay with its complicated cables and counterweights. Things were well-lit, plenty of landmarks, distances easy to judge by eye. She’d barely paid any attention to the navball. Up here in space, even in the sunlight, everything was shaded dark as night- literally- on the side away from the sun. Things reflected oddly. There was nothing up here except herself and the ship. The skills she used by instinct were nearly useless up here.
Learn fast, Crash, she thought to herself. A lot of little fillies are going to be disappointed if the next Wonderbolts show has to fly missing-mare formation.
It took a minute of careful work to bring her relative velocity back to zero, some seventy meters from the ship. This time she watched the navball more than she did the ship, thrusting this way and that even when it made little sense, moving the prograde circle-T into the center of the pink ring. She moved forwards at a leisurely three-tenths of a meter relative speed, cautious and patient. Easy, she told herself. Still plenty of juice for the thrusters. All the time in the world. Take it easy, think it through, do it right.
By and by the ship drew closer. She brought her velocity back to zero some ten meters ahead of the center of mass, just far enough to be well clear of the tumbling ship. Okay, she thought, solutions?
I could let the nose of the ship bump me. Inertia should stop its tumble, and I could use the thrusters to recover.
No. I got lucky once. Rainbow Dash is pretty hard to break, but the suit is another thing. And if it breaks, no more Rainbow Dash. No playing bumper cars with the spacesuit.
But maybe I could get next to the ship near the center, gradually slide up, and use my thrusters to push the ship until it stop tumbling?
No. I’d have to push the ship with my body. I can’t rely on my rear hooves perfectly lining up with thrust, and if I push with all hooves the thrusters automatically shut down. That’s bumper cars again. Think of something else.
When I got out the hatch was pointed at Equus. It was facing sideways, not on top or bottom. If I get on that side of the ship, I should be able to see it clearly, and I might be able to grab the rungs as they pass by on a tumble.
That’s a plan.
“I’m moving around to the side of the ship,” Dash said. “I’m going to get as close as I can, zero out relative to the ship, and make a grab for the hatch egress rungs.”
“Baltimare copies, Six,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Please be careful.”
“Trust me,” Rainbow Dash said, letting a bit of the old brag into her voice. “I’d never leave you hanging.” Yeah, she added to herself, but what about leaving myself hanging?
With careful, light taps of the controls, Rainbow Dash slid around the port side of the tumbling rocket, used the thrusters to pivot so that she faced that side, and then very, very carefully bounced back and forth on horizontal and vertical thrust until she had only a slight, slight drift left and down. This done, she gave the slightest goose of the thrusters forward, drifting towards the ship’s fuel tank. As she approached, the tank was replaced by empty space, and then by the capsule.
And, praise be to Celestia, the blessed rungs.
Rainbow Dash released the thruster controls, reached forward, missed the rung on the left side of the hatch as it passed, hooked her left forehoof under the right rung, wrapped her right forehoof around it and held on for dear life.
For a couple of moments everything, absolutely everything, seemed to spin.
Then one of Dash’s flailing rear hooves found one of the steps. She shoved the hoof in as deep as she could, braced herself, and swiftly stretched her left forehoof across the hatch to grab the other rung.
“I caught it!”
A loud sigh of relief echoed through Dash’s headset. “Good work, Rainbow Dash,” she said. “Re-enter the ship in your own time. Don’t take any risks. Once you’re inside the rest of the day is free time, and we’ll begin re-entry at 1000 hours tomorrow morning Baltimare time.”
“Really?” Rainbow Dash asked. “So if my time is mine, does that mean I can do another EVA later? This was kinda fun, but I need more practice to get it right.”
A moment later something made a loud popping sound in Rainbow Dash’s ears. “Ow! Baltimare, this is Mission Six, comms check.”
After a few moments Applejack’s voice replied, “Six, I think we’d all appreciate it if you just stayed in the capsule for the rest of the flight. And when Twilight comes to, I’m sure she’ll agree.”
“What?”
“It’s not nice to give ponies a scare like that, y’know,” Applejack added. “’Specially when they’ve been high-strung for a really long time.”
“AJ, what happened?”
“Our fearless flight director’s eyes just sorta rolled up inta her head round about th’ time you said th’ words ‘more practice’,” Applejack continued. “She’s out cold on the floor right now. Spike’s gone to get some water to bring her round.”
“Oh. Um. Sorry,” Rainbow Dash chuckled nervously. “My bad. I’ll just get back in the capsule now, okay?”
“Y’all do that,” Applejack said.
The process of opening the capsule hatch from the outside in space was almost as complicated as the process of opening it from within. With the need to hold on with three limbs while the ship tumbled, it became even more complicated.
But Rainbow Dash now had a little extra motivation. Twilight, after all.
Oh, yeah, and getting down alive from orbit, but that was tomorrow. Right now friends were more important.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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I never did figure out that docking tutorial....
Oh lord it's KSP.
7589537 It doesn't help that the method they teach for rendezvous is not terribly helpful. If you follow the instructions, you'll get a close intercept, but when you try to match speeds you'll end up with a suborbital trajectory more often than not. The trick is to match orbits as closely as possible. What I do is, I begin by matching periapsis with the target as closely both in altitude and location in orbit as possible. This puts the closest intercept point at the most efficient point for adjusting orbits. Then, since there's little time pressure in KSP, I drift as much as possible until the intercept distances become managable. At that point I tweak the orbits until I get within a kilometer, then match orbits at closest intercept, and work from there.
Is that a Chrissy-fied NLR logo?
Also, I'm not Scott Manley, but fly safe.
7589607 Possibly; the source is linked to, so you can check for yourself.
Way to early to be considered, but the "free" air and water supply could be used as a weak propulsion system. Not much use getting off planet, but would be very useful for interplanetary missions.
7589784 Twilight's been working on that since the beginning. It's slow going, though. Her eventual goal is a completely magic-driven ship.
Armstrongs Angry Agena Alligator, or the tumbling satelite, and the iconic spacewalk image of the Shuttle MMU.
Im still wondering how they did the mechanics in that an empty vehicle coming down, almost a tenth the weight going up, possibly had enough mass to even get anywhere near teh speed of sound. Its density should be far lower than a human, and even in a streamlined dive, a human has trouble reaching Mach 0.5 in the lower atmosphere, and can barely go supersonic for a short period in the extreme upper atmosphere. Dashs Ships terminal velocity shouldve been less than 100 m/s and closer to 50 m/s, which is car crash speeds, in something that absorb more energy?
Or is this all KSP limitations again?
Im suprised at the RCS thing, after all, at the simplest, they are small rockets, or even compressed air paint guns? Hmm, intrsting idea. Compressed air for pressure, with water for mass. Wonder what the performance is like given a water molecule is lighter than a nitrogen molecule and so moves faster?
the problem with the waste disposal arrangements on the Shuttle alone were difficult enough, eventually ending up with the space version of a ocean going ship vaccuum with bowl airflow extraction venting, but the suit based stuff will always be far more difficult unless either extreamly advanced tech is available, or the user can deal with being directly plumbed in to a soft bot.
Pity you can just shove passengers into a repurposed cargo, passenger module, but then youd eed to have some poor sod in there as well to prevent them from trying to open a window or something in order to get a better view. Or pull the Big Red Handle because they thought it was The Flush. Of course, it is, but not the one they were expecting.
Could Twilight work on a retrieval teleport beacon, as in something thats not just easy to get a lock on, but as long as the recieving pattern is active, is always locked on through harmonic resonance, and just needs an arbitary powerful energy pulse for the system to trigger and activate? all that fun trying to deal with relative velocities, acelerations, where to dump the energy, momentum etc?
Any of the changeling workers try riding the Water Crash Sled more than once?
7589864 Armstrong's problem with the Agena wasn't with the satellite, nor with a spacewalk. It was with a malfunctioning thruster on the Gemini.
I did break down and fly the mission before writing this up. And yes, I did get the green-light for parachutes just BARELY in time. In KSP (which has a planet with 1G at its surface but only one-tenth Earth's diameter) the atmosphere cuts off at 70 Km. The flight got up to about 55 Km... and then augured in nose-first, so it was still going about mach 3 or so at about 7500 meters, the border of what KSP treats as "lower atmosphere." At the end of thrust it was going about 950 m/s, and for equivalent altitude and distance... well, an Earth-proportioned rocket would have been going a lot faster, Long story short, the ship was coming down the most aerodynamically efficient way possible, was still pretty damn heavy (tons), and had a lot of momentum long before it hit any respectable density of air.
Also, even fifty meters per second is over a hundred and ten miles per hour, or in other words, almost guaranteed fatal. In KSP rocket parts begin going boom in excess of only ten meters per second on impact.
The RCS thing is a KSP decision I still don't understand myself.
The passengers will essentially be sealed into a can with windows- the game refers to it as "modified from a jet liner." I don't know yet exactly how I'm going to ponify that. Once in the compartment they're not coming out until landing- there is literally nothing they CAN open.
The long-distance teleport used for water and air supply, as mentioned in prior chapters, rips apart carbon chemical links in an explosive manner. Thus it is not useful for rescuing ponies, since most people would rather remain stranded in space than explode twice. Normal unicorn teleport, so far as I can tell from the show, has an exponential power requirement for distance and a really major initial cost to perform at all- Trixie can't do it at all- and a beacon isn't going to solve that problem.
And the water crash sled does not exist at Horseton Space Center. That presumes far more testing than Chrysalis has any patience, and her minions any sense, to perform.
I can tell you from personal experience that near death experiences become less and less traumatizing every time.
For me personally, after the tenth time I actually started to forget some of them as I list them off like a grocery list.
As a guy from Huntsville, THE Rocket City, and as a guy whose step-grandfather helped work on Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, the Space Shuttle program and Spacelab, I truly appreciate the approach you have taken with this fic.
Space has always held a place in my heart. And it means a lot to see someone write about it with a great passion. So, Kudos.
That was very good. I feel like you really nailed their reactions to Rainbow's near-death experience, and the subtle clues that Rainbow really isn't all right no matter what she tells herself were very well done. I would have liked to see a bit more of Twilight directly instead of only hearing about her through Rainbow's memory and over the radio, although this framing probably made the most sense since it is harder to show Rainbow's issues than Twilight's.
Also, I spotted an amusing technical error in this story.
That's actually survivable. Someone ran the numbers on reentry in a space suit a while back to see how badly it would kill you, and made the surprising discovery that it won't. So long as the suit is properly built, it will be perfectly capable of getting you home in one piece, and Rainbow might even be able to get away with no parachute so long as she can get her wings free quickly or at least use her normal magic to survive a crash. Granted she would have absolutely no way of knowing that and this bit does a great job showing how she isn't nearly as ok as she thinks, but I still felt like pointing it out because it is a really interesting piece of space trivia.
7589936
With having no fixed wing design basis, which I use because its so unusual, about the only thing I can think of myself at this moment is a pressurised cabin mounted on a carriage for moving Earth Ponies, or accident victims across mountainous regions by Pegasus air, given that so far tehres no tourist submarines or even suply runs to shallow underwater sea pony regions?
Still, going to be a long time before orbital escape method implies a plastic zip up bag suit, and a can of expanding foam.
7589607 The CSA needs Scott Manley's snarky Scottishness narrating all their flights.
Of course they would blatantly steal CSP's design.
Chryssie is obviously smarter, so you can't prove that, Twilight.
Changelings rule, ponies drool, Dash! And Cherry is an honorable changeling.
Friendship is good for a lot of things, but it's not the best way to run a space program. If Equestria wants to be competitive, they need to get ponies who can devote their full time to this. Preferably ones whose deaths wouldn't mark a major blow to national security. The protagonists can't be expected to do literally everything. I hope they find viable alternatives before something irreparable happens.
7598321 They are shapeshifters, but in their natural form, without using magic, the point stands.
7598802 I always mess that up. Will fix it.
7601335 Pods aren't suspended animation. If your vital signs are slowed to next-to-nil, you don't dream, and you don't produce love. The pods have to have a minimum of upkeep to prevent the ponies inside from wasting away.
First off, this has been an excellent story. My friends and I basically burned through it the past week and the laughing has only just stopped (the addition of silly voices to reading helped with that, although I nearly lost my voice during Flam's interviews). Keep it up, we're eager for more.
Second, I'm having trouble getting my head around the ESA. Obviously you're loading them down with setbacks to give the CSP an advantage despite having a pathetic budget and some...questionable engineers. But even so, a couple of their problems make me go bwuh.
The pilot roster is madness. Rainbow Dash makes perfect sense, but Cadence and Fluttershy? There are better fliers in the background pony roster. And why is the commander of the Wonderbolts the one tapped by the program instead of somepony who doesn't have those kind of extra responsibilities? Put a bucking pie in the simulator and lure Soarin in, at least.
Fluttershy backing out of the program is a thing that could go either way. It makes sense from some angles (reduction of madness being a big one), not at all from others. But I cannot for the life of me figure out what your reasoning is for Pinkie Pie bailing.
7604422 The ESA is what it is because Twilight Sparkle is not merely a princess and not merely one of the smartest ponies in the country, but she's also Celestia's go-to pony for pretty near everything. And since Twilight trusts friendship, and in particular her friends, more than anything else, her group became the core leaders of the Equestrian government's space effort.
But friendship only goes so far. Fluttershy's role as a test pilot was in name only- she only performed ground tests on systems, because she's scared livid of being in a rocket. After Flight Five she couldn't even bring herself to do ground tests. Pinkie Pie bowed out for similar reasons: it stopped being fun and became really, really scary. She can't be at Cape Friendship without thinking about Dash's almost-Bad-Day.
Cadance began as the sole pilot for the Crystal Empire's space program, and that mainly by popular demand of the ponies of the Empire. In the long term an independent space effort was untenable, so when Twilight needed a new backup to Rainbow Dash, Cadance was the most convenient choice- especially since she was already the second pony in space.
Spitfire's pilot status (and for that matter Dari- er, Miss Yearling's) is more an honorary thing, though Spitfire does do some training just in case. In her particular case, she has the status because as Wonderbolts leader she is considered the top flyer in all Equestria, and thus it would be insulting if she weren't named a pilot at some level. As it is, she's on hand for every launch anyway. The Wonderbolts are in charge of securing Cape Friendship, retrieving ESA flights upon landing and for clearing Cape Friendship airspace during launches.
It bears remembering that in Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash the ESA has two geniuses of different kinds, and in terms of clothing Rarity comes close to being a third. Every space program uses the ESA's life support systems, and almost all of them use ESA-made space suits, and before long all of them will use ESA EVA thruster packs. There are other advances they've made that I can't recall just this moment.
The principle reasons CSP is still at par or marginally ahead in the space race are: (1) Twilight Sparkle and her friends have their regular lives and other calls on their time; (2) Twilight Sparkle's focusing her design efforts on a magic-powered, single-stage-to-orbit craft, which is a long-term project that hasn't yet shown returns; and (3) Twilight Sparkle isn't willing to cut as many corners on safety and testing as the changelings are, which is why she was quite happy to cede first orbit to CSP-11. but ESA-6 is proof that, despite these drawbacks, the ESA isn't going to yield up any more ground. It is definitely a race.
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That doesn't make a lot of sense, though. If it was Rarity or AJ, sure. But Pinkie?
7590240
... That is very interesting.
7589602
From close intercept, you boost retrograde relative to target to bleed off relative velocity, then towards target. As long as you boost towards the target you should A) get progressively closer, and B) achieve a similar if not same orbit.
I can get 900 tons of fuel in a 100k orbit but I can't dock. :(
Loving this story though :)
7640532 Using, I might add, dead minimum rocket tech- no Rockomax 2.5-scale parts, for example. And staying 30 or fewer parts, 18 tons or less.
I never realised just how much I needed this story.
So, the big question, when r we getting another chapter?
7727403 When it's complete. I blew my chance to get some work done on it last week when I left the charging cable for my laptop at home during my trip to South Carolina. The current chapter is about one-quarter done, with the flight preliminaries mostly done and Mission 12 (an in-atmosphere rocket flight to test the passenger compartment and get a bit of science) about to launch.
7727700 thank u for the information, it sets my mind at ease that u r still working on a great story, though I apoligize if it sounds like I was pressuring u into writeing.
HOW have I missed the existence of this story!
I love Kerbal Space Program!
I love Ponies!
I love Changebughorses too!
How much do I love KSP? Enough to build a physical instrument panel! It's a work in progress, but it's slowly getting there, one step at a time. I'm using real meters, a real navball, real digital readouts, and not pictured, a tape meter I got to display the radar altimeter.
richfiles.solarbotics.net/eb/KerbalCM_InstrumentTestFit.jpg
richfiles.solarbotics.net/eb/KerbalCM_ChassisFitAngle.jpg
It's just a drawing, but this is the eventual setup. It's not exact, or to scale. I've also sold the single meters and replaced them with more dual meters, so the arrangement isn't quite exact, but it's close.
richfiles.solarbotics.net/eb/KerbalDesk3.png
Now I get to be distracted by Kerbaliscious Horse Words! Last time I read a truly epic ponies in space style story was "Our First Steps", though that was a much more serious look at a pony space program, based in realism. There was another story, which interestingly enough, puts Cherry Berry and Chrysalis both in space together, called the Moon's Apprentice, but that's tangental to the main story. A kerbal inspired comedy fic... Oh yeah!
MOAR!!! I NEED MOAR!!!!!
I found this whilst browsing Derpibooru, do you plan on replacing the current cover art with it?
orig06.deviantart.net/1adb/f/2016/321/8/4/changeling_space_program_by_texasuberalles-daoscza.jpg
7754793 Yes. I commissioned that art at Nightmare Nights. From a different artist I commissioned artwork of Goddard the Griffon and Occupant (which I have) and the four bulls of the Minotaur Space Project (not yet in hand), and I was waiting until I had everything before posting it all.
I fucking hate you cuz you say this is inspired by KSP and I watch Robbaz play it, and this makes me want to fucking buy it but I'm fucking poor and it's stringing me out worse than twilight and iv only been reading this for a day. This makes me want to buy it on the One no play it but I'm too poor, I mean I could get it, but I also think it'd be horribly optimized for Xbox. Damn your great story making me want to get that game.
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7606328
I had the same thoughts. If friends (and Mane 6 are friends to the point of 'In Harmony, We are one') are going into trouble, talk them out of it. If that isn't an option? Help them get through it.
This train of thought applie to Pinkie and Fluttershy probably more than anyone else in the group. Relegating them to different duties, perhaps, as Fluttershy's fear just might be crippling for backup pilot role. But there are different roles they can take.
And Pinkie is still at the very least creating rations, so she's not exactly out in any way.
7779076 My line of thought was a little different. We've seen how all these ponies react to stress, fear, imminent mortal peril to themselves and those they care about. Pinkie's reaction to "really really scary" has always been to double down on not being afraid. Jokes, comedy routines, songs, desserts, artillery, full blown parties, she has a wide arsenal of tools to get past scary moments and bounce back, dragging everypony else with her oft as not (and to the detriment of the sanity of everypony involved). The idea that a bad rocket flight broke her simply isn't credible. She's faced worse.
Awww.
Ha! Take that, neurotic pony!
7779211
No, she hasn't. Not like this.
8033602 Just looking at season 1 I count five life or death situations that Pinkie was a helpless observer to. In season one. Things ramp up pretty hard after that.
Yes, Pinkie's seen worse, lived worse. They all have.
8037845 Yeah, I don't see Pinkie as one who would be affected by something like this. Maybe a few minutes, but once she noticed the problem, it would already be gone. She's a lot tougher than pretty much anypony in that regard.
But I don't think she would want to continue something that would endanger her friend's life unnecessarily. Same with Fluttershy.
Twilight, on the other hand, is reacting well within her personality parameters. All of them in danger for the fate of the world - just fine. But if she feels that it is her responsibility for putting one of her friends in that danger... then it becomes much more of a problem.
KSP has been added to my steam wishlist. Just waiting for a special. Cool story, loving it.
I would think having a unicorn perform the first EVA would have been ideal. No need to worry about mana batteries. Or even thrusters. Simpy apply telekinesis directly. Plus it would have made for an interesting opportunity to address "equal and opposite reaction" implications for a unicorn pulling herself towards a spaceship.
7589607
I've flown Req'less and sideways... But never safe.
My playlist switched to Sully Orchestration's "Megalo Strikes Back" at the moment Rainbow Dash went out of control.
And damn music really sets the scene, I, unfortunately, don't get emotionally invested in stories even though one of my best memories is me crying when a character died in a fan fiction. (It was Draco Malfoy by the way.)
Yet in spite of this my heart was pounding and I was biting my thumb.
The point of this was to say you should put music suggestions in your story.
Oh... that moment when I did an EVA to scape a ship that ran out of fuel in a crashing trajectory to Minmus... and that goofy smile when I realized that I could push it just enouh to save the day. And the frown when I discovered that they had patched that up and the ship did not change speed, but DID tumble... bad times were had...
And those first EVAs... such an easy yet panic-inducing task that makes you overreact and send everything into a violent spin...
Oh, and it’s the first time I hear about a ‘kraken’ attack caused by pushing the ship... interesting.
8719854 As of 1.3 you can still make the Manley Maneuver work... but you need a pilot or a probe still in the ship to maintain SAS. Otherwise the ship will tumble and you won't be able to maintain a consistent trajectory on your backpack burn.
8719854 Also, the kraken didn't object to my pushing- it flung my kerbal and my capsule apart just because JEB WAS GETTING OUT. For that one EVA the hatch turned into a catapult.
EVA was probably one of the hardest problems to crack in the early days of the space race. In fact it was a part of a number of Gemini missions before it was finally considered a success. It's hard to move around in a space suit as your fighting the internal pressure (famously Alexey Leonov's suit inflated so much in made getting back in a problem). While some tasks on the Gemini mission took a few tries to get right (Rendezvous, and hard docking) it took pretty much the whole of Gemini to figure out how to work and move around outside the ship, and have it be useful work and not putting the astronaut at risk of injury.
8667086
At least it wasn't NITRO's chip remix xD
Technically Y'all is a plural pronoun... last time I've checked Dash is a single mare