Changeling Space Program

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 14: Mission R4: CEO and Chief Bottle Washer

Chrysalis graciously nodded her head to the air traffic control changeling who frantically waved his guide wands to stop all the flyers to give her top priority for landing. It was nice, when returning from a two-week sabbatical, to receive the recognition and respect one was due.

An hour later, she would look back on that moment of respect and hug it in her mind, because it was the last she got upon her return.

Her first stop, naturally, was the administration building to relieve Cherry Berry(338). There were changelings, scientists, and the inevitable construction ponies (339) passing by her almost every step across the grounds, giving her barely a polite “ma’am” or “my queen” as they scrambled on one errand after another. That didn’t bother her (340), eager as she was to see Cherry Berry greet her return with tasty, tasty gratitude, ready to collapse under the weight of all that unwanted responsibility.

But to her surprise, Cherry Berry wasn’t breaking under the strain. Chrysalis found her in the throne room / office, using the telepresence spell there to speak with Elytron back at the Hive. “I don’t care if you are short-hooved,” the pink pony was saying as the queen opened the door. “We need everypony we can get at Appleoosa making rocket parts. We’ve got two Minmus missions to build, and Twilight Sparkle just put in an order for a ton of boosters and fuel tanks! And you know there are business ponies headhunting our best trained changelings for their own businesses!”

Chrysalis hadn’t known that, herself. She’d thought Cherry Berry and Goddard were just expanding, expanding, and expanding the Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs business. She didn’t remember ever being told that her changelings were getting hired away from their duties to the hive for mere money.(341) It was one thing to have some misfits put in make-work jobs across Equestria as part of the “integration” cover story, but the really skilled drones should have stayed put, darn it!

Elytron obviously agreed. “So stop them!” the head warrior drone barked. “The hive can’t function with our best bugs all gallivanting off somewhere!”

“And what am I supposed to do about it?” Cherry asked. “It’s all part of your queen’s plans, remember? She wants you all to get along with ponies, and getting hired at high wages is part of that!”

Again, this was news to Chrysalis. How high are these wages, exactly? she wondered. And how much is my cut going to be?

“Now,” Cherry continued, not letting Elytron respond, “either you send me one hundred decent trainable changelings to Appleoosa by tomorrow, or I come down to the hive and pick your fifty best myself! And if you have problems with that, just ask yourself: what’s more important to your queen- getting to the moon, or guarding a cave under a mountain of dirt in a desert nopony wants to go anywhere near? Think about that while you’re picking out my new workers!”

Chrysalis waited until Cherry cut the connection before saying, “Well done, pony. I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Cherry didn’t jump in fright or surprise. She didn’t wrap her forehooves around Chrysalis’s leg and fall into tears thanking her for returning. She just turned her glare to the queen, said, “You’re a day late,” and walked towards the door. “I assume you heard the conversation. I’ve got to get to Appleoosa and get production back up to speed. Goddard’s got his hooves- I mean his talons full with all the problems on the Skipper and Mainsail engines.”

Chrysalis raised an eyebrow as Cherry walked past. “Excuse me?” she asked. “Don’t you have anything else to say to me?”

Cherry paused. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. Did you have a good vacation?”

“Yes, quite restful,” Chrysalis said, and would have continued except for the pony’s immediate response.

“That’s nice,” Cherry said. “If you can catch Occupant, he’ll give you an update on where things stand. I’ve got to go. Try not to let things fall apart until I get back.”

And the pony was out the door and gone, leaving Chrysalis to stare after her, the pleasant imaginings and anticipation of the prior three days crumbling to dream dust.

---

It had been all so clear in her mind. She would return to Horseton, console Cherry after that pink pony broke under the strain of running everything herself, give a few snappy orders and put everyone back to work. Chrysalis hadn’t even considered the possibility- the cold reality, really- that a space program that had functioned well enough without her to rescue three stranded astronauts could survive two additional weeks without her.

Well, now she stared that reality in the face- or, rather, in the briefly-viewed pink flanks and yellow tail as the pony had dashed out the door. And she didn’t like how it looked, not one bit.

One of the cardinal rules of being a queen, as Chrysalis understood it, was making oneself appear absolutely indispensable. Let on that your job could be done just as easily by the drunken hobo pony who shouted random nonsense, and you opened the door for your replacement.

And now, after seven weeks of being sidelined (except for a week at the Hive undoing the five most stupid things Elytron had done in her absence), she found that not only had she revealed herself to be dispensable, but she’d lined up her own replacement in the process… and it wasn’t even a changeling.

Well, that wouldn’t do, not at all.

Chrysalis hadn’t noticed on the way in the absence of guards on the immediate entrance to her office / throne room. In fact, it took a moment to realize there had been only one guard on the main door to the administration building. That wasn’t good. The pony had either slipped up, or else she’d sent the changelings who were supposed to be there on other tasks. And even in the latter case it counted as a slip-up, because you NEVER sent away your last guard/flunky. You always kept one nearby you, so that other people knew you were important(342).

And right this moment, Chrysalis absolutely could not be seen as chasing Occupant down herself. That would be putting herself under his power. Recognizing his authority in Mission Control was one thing- that authority, after all, stemmed directly from herself, and everyling knew it. But outside the control room Occupant needed to be the one who came running when she called, and not the other way around- especially now, when she needed to re-establish her authority.

So, without an escort, without anything other than her own glorious presence, Chrysalis stepped into the hallway and then out the front door. “Guard?” she asked- no, no, bad sign, she thought. “Where are the other guards who should be stationed around this building?”

The guard, snazzy in his peaked cap and pony-style security guard blouse, saluted smartly. “I’m it, my queen,” he said. “We have multiple tour groups today being escorted, plus there’s the barges due to arrive from Baltimare and Manehattan today that need unloading.”

Had Chrysalis been anyone other than Chrysalis, she might have admitted that these considerations were fair. But she was Chrysalis, and moreover she was in a bad mood growing worse by the moment. “Change of plans,” she growled. “I want two guards on each door of this building plus four for my office, understood? And I want someone to go fetch Occupant from whatever he’s doing and get him over here right this moment. I’m due a status report on our next mission.”

“Understood, ma’am!” the drone said, saluting smartly yet again. But, aside from the salute, he didn’t move a muscle.

Chrysalis waited patiently for what she thought was a more than fair amount of time to give the guard the opportunity to follow orders without prompting(343). “And when were you planning on doing what I ordered you to?” she asked, in a tone that indicated just how shaky the ground was under that guard’s hooves.

“As soon as I’m relieved, ma’am!” the guard said. “Can’t leave my post!”

Chrysalis glared a little harder. “I just gave you a direct order,” she snarled.

“Yes, ma’am!” the drone said eagerly. “But if I left now, this building would be totally unguarded! I did that last week when we had that fire on the launch pad, and Miss Berry, well, you know the language she uses sometimes!”

Chrysalis drew herself up to her full height and a little extra, putting her fangs about a quarter-inch from the guard’s own muzzle. “And which of the two of us is the scarier,” she hissed. “A little pink earth pony… or me?”

“With respect, my queen,” the guard said, “it’s a choice between getting chewed out by you, or being chewed out by you AND Miss Berry. But don’t worry, I’ll see to it the paperwork for the guard roster and duty schedule is put on your desk the minute my relief-”

Chrysalis put a hoof on the guard’s muzzle. “Hold that thought,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Two minutes later, the queen of the changelings had verified that, yes indeed, the single storage cocoon she’d had hidden in a closet was still there and still in usable condition. The pony hadn’t thrown it away.

Two minutes after that, it had a new tenant, his nice peaked cap floating just above his head, the shininess of his security badge dulled by the translucent gel of the cocoon.

I’ll think of something suitable to do to him later, Chrysalis thought, as against her will she went wandering the space center in search of answers.

Footnotes:

(338) Who, Chrysalis expected, would be terribly relieved indeed. She’d been looking forward to that moment for the prior three days.

(339) Current top priority: new buildings for the research and development complex. Enhancements to the tracking station and the launch pad were also on the agenda, to be followed by a revamped air control tower with the newest in radios and magic rangefinding systems.

(340) Yet. In retrospect it bothered her a great deal.

(341) Chrysalis didn’t feel any better when she found out the word “mere” didn’t apply in the least to the amounts of money being waved at her subjects. But she did feel better once her still-loyal subjects reported to her on why, exactly, the ponies were paying so much. A certain number of them had decided to take advantage of the changeling lack of concern regarding legalities and moralities, and it didn’t take much after that to provide Chrysalis with a fresh new supply of blackmail for certain rich and influential “fine upstanding citizens”.

(342) The thought that Cherry Berry honestly didn’t care whether or not anyone else thought she was important was so alien to Chrysalis that even direct explanations of that fact didn’t register.

(343) Three point two seconds.

The four guard changelings dropped Occupant, none too gently, to the floor of Chrysalis’s office / throne room. “As you ordered, my queen,” the senior of the four rumbled. “With your permission, we’ll get back to our duties.”

“The four of you,” Chrysalis said, seated on her throne and doing her best to appear in control of things, “will remain here and wait on my pleasure. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the senior guard said, and all four saluted in the exact same way that the guard napping in the closet had. “And I’m sure nothing will happen to the supplies on the quay while they’re unguarded.”

“And I’m sure no tourists will get into Building 7,” another guard said. “Besides, probably nobody will be using the vacuum chamber or the cryogenics testing facility today.”

“And the cows who live just outside the fence promised they wouldn’t eat our grass anymore,” a third guard said. “So no need to patrol the perimeter, right?”

“And-”

Chrysalis hissed the fourth guard into silence, then added, “The next changeling who thinks of some other thing more important than serving his or her queen will think again if they know what’s good for them!” Glaring at Occupant, she asked, “And what were you doing that required my guards to drag you over here?”

“Er… negotiating a large contract with ESA to put a satellite in orbit of Minmus,” Occupant said quietly. “You know… to make the trip pay for itself. Especially since we need a satellite in orbit there anyway, as a relay point for radio transmissions to control Mission R4.”

“How large?” Chrysalis asked.

“Hm… about… carry the five… hmmm... “ Occupant counted on the holes in his hooves. “About sixty percent of the cost of the entire flight,” he finally said. “At least, that was Miss Sparkle’s offer when I was, um, summoned.”

“How many actual bits?”

Occupant told her.

Chrysalis’s eyes went wide. “That’s more than the original mission control shac- I mean building cost!” she gasped. “Just how big is this rocket?”

“Um, really big,” Occupant said. “I don’t remember all the stuff Doctor von Brawn and the other bulls told me, but it was something like, ‘We need to get to orbit, and then we need that much again to get out to Minmus, slow down for orbit there, and land. And then we need a bit more to get off Minmus and back home, if everything works. And then add a satellite on top of that.’ So, um, it’s pretty big.”

“Don’t remember?” Chrysalis asked. “You’re being trained as a space scientist, Occupant. You’re supposed to know all of this!”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant said meekly. “But, well, it gets complicated really quickly. What we’re doing is sending a probe-controlled lander- made up exactly like what the real thing would be, except Cherry won’t be inside it this time.”

“And why won’t she be inside it?” Chrysalis asked.

“Well… because we’re not sure any of it’s going to work,” Occupant said. “We were hoping the new generation rocket motors would be ready in time, but they’re not. Also, we’ve been experimenting on a sort of aerodynamic shell to go around the, um, the uneven, bumpy bits to reduce drag during liftoff. But we keep having failures with the release system. So we’re having to put together the Minmus mission with existing hardware… and… well, we’re not sure the existing hardware can do it.”

Chrysalis pressed for details, and bit by bit she got them.

Assuming the interrupted negotiations were still on after this debriefing, Mission R4 would have two genuine contracts- the satellite launch and a temperature survey of the landing site and certain points in orbit around Minmus. In addition to that, the mission aimed to be not just the first mission to fly by or orbit Minmus, but the first to land under control and return to Equus. The overall delta-V required for the trip worked out to be over one and a half times the amount required for a simple orbital mission.

But it wasn’t as simple as just throwing more boosters on the stack. Every drop of fuel you put on the lander had to be paid for with a massive amount more fuel in the first or second stages to get it to orbit. And since this launch had both the lander and the satellite- both loaded down with scientific equipment- that required even more fuel yet. And without the shell to make the satellite and lander aerodynamically smooth, the launch would go through fuel like a Manehattan rave party aficionado went through binkies. (344)

The end goal was to put a combined payload of nearly ten tons into Minmus orbit- that is, without touching any of the fuel in the lander. To put that in perspective, the largest orbiting vessel Chrysalis had piloted, the tourist special, came in just over four tons to Equus orbit, counting fuel and final-stage engine… and that stack was dangerously tall and wobbly during the first stage ascent. Mission R4 was putting more than twice as much weight a heck of a lot farther out than anything other than Mission R2 had ever gone. That meant its booster had to be, if Occupant’s numbers were right, four times as large as the tourist mission stack…

… which meant four times as expensive.

And building a ship that big pushed the limits of what existing rocket engines and fuel systems could accomplish. It wasn’t a question of just adding boosters anymore, like the mixed set that had lifted Dragonfly’s bloated rescue ship to orbit. On this mission, the boosters would have to have boosters. And the more you did that, as Occupant understood it, the more you ran into the law of diminishing returns(345). Atmospheric drag became more of an issue. Three smaller tanks weighed more, and had more drag, than one big tank.

The aerodynamic shell, or “fairing” as George Cowley had named it, had been intended to help with that, at least around the payload. Had it worked, the rocket design would have used the next-generation fuel tanks that had been tested on Dragonfly’s flight plus a ton of Thud supplemental engines. Unfortunately, without the fairing, that design had been so inefficient that they’d never been able to get the package to even a Minmus fly-by in simulations without burning through the lander’s fuel tanks.

So, while Goddard pushed like Tartarus to fix the final faults in the Skipper and Mainsail engines, the rest of the space program worked like mad to assemble what sounded to Chrysalis like the biggest kludge ever put together by changeling or pony(346). Hence, everyone running around like a frightened pony who’d just drunk four cups of strong coffee.

“All right, I get the basics,” Chrysalis said. “Have someone send me the details when you get a chance. And…”

She practically had to bite her tongue to avoid saying What can I do to help? Queens did not offer help like eager schoolfillies. Queens gave orders and made decisions.

But… all the decisions had already been made, hadn’t they? What was left for her to do?

“And… see to it that I get all the personnel reports that have no doubt been piling up in my absence,” Chrysalis finished, suppressing a sigh. “Now go conclude those negotiations. Since this one flight appears to be as expensive as every tourist flight we’ve flown combined, we might as well get some money back from it.”

Occupant saluted, turned around and walked out… followed by three of the four guards who had brought him. Only the senior guard remained, and even he kept looking back and forth between Occupant and Chrysalis, as if undecided about what to do.

This time Chrysalis did sigh. “Get them back here,” she said.

A moment later she had to add, “Not you, Occupant!”

Footnotes:

(344) Ravers who read this work will no doubt argue that wearing a binkie to a rave is “so last decade”. This is not the first time that Equestria is behind the times in comparison to other universes, and likely as not it won’t be the last. Just roll with it.

(345) This phrase was Chrysalis’s, not Occupant’s. Occupant referred to it as “not working as good as it should,” but Chrysalis was accustomed to situations where keeping up an infiltration guise for another week wouldn’t net the love it cost to maintain the transformation.

(346) Considering some of CSP’s prior flights, this was not a claim to be made lightly.

Chrysalis definitely wasn’t chasing after Warner von Brawn. No, ma’am. Definitely not. She was inspecting her domain, as any ruler had a right to, and the fact that she was inspecting that part of it overseen by CSP’s top minotaur boffin was just one of those little coincidences.

“Ah, good evening, doctor!” she said as she stepped into von Brawn’s office. The bull, looking slightly less than his normally unruffled self, sat at a drafting table, examining blueprints. “And how do things proceed in your world?”

“With caution,” von Brawn rumbled. “For some reason the simulator keeps insisting that this rocket design will pitch up and flip during launch. And it doesn’t seem to matter which way we orient it- it always turns in the same direction. I can’t explain it, but it could spell a very expensive disaster for the mission if I can’t fix it.”

“I see,” lied Chrysalis. “Well, since you have the blueprints in front of me, why not walk me through the design?”

“I may as well,” von Brawn groaned. “I’m not making any real progress, anyway.” He pulled up an overall chart of the rocket. Just as Chrysalis had suspected, the thing didn’t so much look like a stack as a pile of pointy sticks stood on end. “Here we have the total stack. The satellite is on the very top.” He pointed to the top of the tallest stick, which did look much like Missions R2 and R3. “Below that the lander, with its landing gear and return engine.” He pointed out the capsule, which sat atop a cluster of three tanks and engines that reminded Chrysalis a bit of Mission 4. “And everything else,” he said, pointing at the collection of fuel tanks, engines, solid rocket boosters, and fins below, “is more or less to get the satellite and lander into Minmus orbit.”

“That’s a lot of junk,” Chrysalis said, for lack of any more cogent contribution to the conversation.

“Indeed,” von Brawn said. “Here we have the first stage.” He circled the base of the ship. “Four Thumper solid-fuel boosters and three stacks of liquid fuel powering two Swivels and four Thud supplemental engines. We were going to add a Reliant under the central stack-” he pointed the very center of the tangled rocket parts- “-but it turns out we get better delta-V without it. We’ll be metering the solid fuel boosters so they and the liquid fuel engines burn out at the same time. The fuel tanks will be ducted together so that all the engines draw from all the fuel reservoirs equally.” He pointed to a tangle of ducts and pumps that Chrysalis couldn’t have untangled with a crochet hook.

“Then we go to the second stage. Three Swivel engines.” The minotaur tapped the three engines and their tall fuel stacks in the middle of the blueprint. “This stage also has ducting, but for a different purpose. The ducts here pump fuel and oxidizer out of the outer two stacks and into the central stack, so the central engine doesn’t touch its own fuel supply until the outer two stacks burn out.”

“What’s the point of that?” Chrysalis asked.

“Ideally the fuel in the outer stacks will be enough to achieve low orbit,” von Brawn said. “Once up, we dump the outer boosters, leaving only one Swivel with a full tank. We use that for the trans-Minmus injection burn, and if enough fuel remains, for the orbital capture burn as well.”

He reached a finger up to the lander and said, “Once in Minmus orbit, of course, we decouple the satellite. That leaves us just the lander.” Von Brawn circled the capsule and its three engines with a thick fingertip. “The outer two engines get us orbit, approach, and if all has gone well up to this point, landing. Throughout the time in Minmus local space, the scientific equipment on the lander will record information and store it here,” he tapped a square thing on the tip of the capsule where the main parachute ought to go, “for either return to Equus or radio transmission to our computers. We’d much rather have the equipment back, though. We get better quality data that way.

“Once we land and collect such data as we can, the lander activates its central engine.” von Brawn tapped the appropriate spot. “The spent landing engines and fuel tanks, along with nonessential scientific gear, are decoupled.” he continued, making little flicking motions with his fingers. “The remaining ship breaks Minmus orbit, falls back to Equus, ditches its engine, and re-enters. And only these components- the capsule and its immediate attachments, plus the cargo bay with the probe control unit inside- only this of all the stack returns home.” He sighed and added, “Assuming the whole mess doesn’t shred itself on launch.”

“Quite an encouraging statement, doctor,” Chrysalis said dryly.

“I should much prefer it if we could have used the new generation systems,” von Brawn said. “This is exactly what they’re designed to do. But until they stop exploding when set to full throttle, we just can’t use them… and we don’t have time to wait.”

“And why is that?” Chrysalis asked.

“Because Twilight Sparkle is moving forward with a crewed flight to the moon,” von Brawn said.

“WHAT???”

---

“Well, of course I knew about it,” Cherry Berry said from the telepresence projection. “One of the reasons we’re backed up here in Appleoosa is the huge order Twilight Sparkle put in for boosters. And for next-generation fuel tanks.”

“And you accepted those orders?” Chrysalis asked, outraged. The enemy was going to get ahead of them. She, Chrysalis, was going to be second to the moon, at best. And the pony in front of her(347) was working to make it possible!

“Well, yes,” Cherry Berry said. “The whole notion behind spinning off this factory into its own company kind of requires that we sell to anypony who has money. And yes, that includes Twilight Sparkle, who might I add is a personal friend of mine, even if she did reject me as a pilot.” The pink pony glared right back at Chrysalis. “So yes, I sold her a wagonload of rocket parts. Now ask me if I’m worried about that.”

“You ought to be,” Chrysalis growled. “Considering my opinion of subordinates who betray my trust, you ought to be very worried indeed.”

“Pfft.” Cherry Berry waved a hoof at this. “I’m not worried, because you shouldn’t be worried,” she said. “Remember when we had EVA training at Cape Friendship? Remember the big pink thing sitting out on the runway?”

Chrysalis gagged. “That pink monstrosity? I only wish I could forget it!” She blinked, then added, “Wait a moment. You mean she intends to take that to the moon?”

“Not at one shot,” Cherry said. “I don’t know if it can even make orbit, even with all the boosters Twilight can wrap around it. It’s a pretty thing, but it's gotta weigh at least fifty tons- five times what Dragonfly’s ship weighed. They’re not getting that to the moon any time soon.”

“How sure are you?”

“Pretty sure,” Cherry said. “Twilight’s given up on a pure magic-thruster approach. What she’s working on now is a reusable ship that can land like a pegasus- or like my biplane, to be more exact.” She made a swooping motion with her forehoof. “So she’s replaced the magic boosters with standard rocket engines and retooled our second-gen fuel tanks to supply fuel and oxidizer to those. That, plus a lot of smaller boosters- and I mean a LOT of boosters- will get it to orbit. There’s a little fuel for orbital maneuvers, but that’s all.”

“That’s all,” Chrysalis said flatly. “Didn’t one of the bulls tell me that orbit is halfway to anyplace else?”

“Yeah. But it’ll take as much lift as those boosters to get that fat, heavy ship out to the moon, down, up, and back again,” Cherry said. “And that’s assuming there’s a long, flat spot on the Moon for that thing to set down. It can’t do a vertical landing.” She shook her head. “No, Chrysalis, Twilight Sparkle is not going to beat you to the moon. We still have time to do it the right way- and the safe way.”

“You’d better be right, pony,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Look, I have more important things to worry about,” Cherry said. “I’ve got to get our boosters built, too. I have to shake some Science Jrs. out of Twilight. And once R4 launches, I begin training for the follow-up, which is going to have me in a capsule for fifteen days. Fifteen days in a can, Chrysalis. Fifteen days where the only cherries I get are freeze-dried. I’m not looking forward to it.”

“Fifteen days?” Chrysalis asked. “What do you mean, fifteen days?”

“Minmus is something like three times as far away from Equus as the moon,” Cherry said. “That was as close as Luna could bring it. It takes time to fly out that far, and more time to fly back, and if something goes wrong, I never come back. So yeah, compared to that, I don’t worry much about you, all right?”

Chrysalis snorted, but the pony had made her point. Even she couldn’t think of a more horrible fate than drifting off into the unknown, beyond rescue, never to return…

“So if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do,” Cherry said, and, without asking leave, she cut the connection. The wall of Chrysalis’s office went blank.

Chrysalis considered doing something about it- calling her back to correct her gross lack of respect, sending a couple of guards to make that displeasure a little more plain, or just sending her a small basket of rotted cherries- but decided against it. She wasn’t angry about Cherry cutting her off, not half as much as she was angry that the pony was probably right on every point. Twilight Sparkle probably was wasting time and money on a fool’s errand- and putting more money in her pockets in the process. Cherry Berry really did have more important things to do than comfort her nerves, hard as that was to admit.

Everybody had important things to do… except the queen.

Footnote:

(347) - Technically the pony hundreds of miles away, but Chrysalis was looking her in the eyes through the power of technomancy, and she wasn’t inclined to be rational just that moment.

Two guards looked up at the top of the #2 liquid oxygen storage tank.

“I don’t care what you say,” one said to the other, “I’m not going to be the one to tell the queen she has to come down from there.”

“Well, someling has to,” the other guard said. “It’s not safe up there.”

They stood and stared as Chrysalis, reclined on a large folding lawn chair, turned the page of her current trashy novel. The late spring sun beat down on the space center, bringing temperatures the rest of Equestria would call "summer", and the area immediately around the oxygen tanks was the coolest outdoor space on the grounds(348). The queen wasn’t the first changeling or pony to seek comfort there, but she was the first the guards couldn’t shoo off.

“She doesn’t really seem like she’s having much fun,” the first guard said. Indeed, Chrysalis had flipped the same page back and forth four times already, and her casual reclining pose had shifted subtly five times in as many minutes. They couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but the rest of her body language looked really tense, at least by changeling standards.

“Doesn’t she have something to do?” the second guard said.

“Maybe she’s showing us queens don’t have to do things,” the first guard said. “One of those object lesson things.”

“You think?” the second guard asked. “I like it a lot better than the last time she tried to teach me a lesson.” He shook his head and added, “I don’t think this works quite as well as hauling a loaded pod around the mesa for a hundred circuits, though.”

“You two idiots realize I can hear every word you say, right?”

The guards looked back up. In the moment their attention had wavered, the queen had lowered her book, pulled her sunglasses down her muzzle, and glared down from the oxygen tank at them.

“Um, your maj- my- ma’am- um, Queen Chrysalis, ma’am,” the first guard said, “are you aware that the tank you’re lying on is full of oxygen kept at over three thousand pounds of pressure per square inch?”

“Really?” Chrysalis asked. “What’s that in Prance?”(349)

“Oh for…” The second guard tossed his snazzy peaked cap down onto the concrete. “My queen, I most respectfully request you come down from there at once!”

Chrysalis made a show of considering the request, make a soft tsk sound, and then said, “Oh, very well then. It is only proper for a queen to grant a reasonable request from her loyal and obedient subjects.”(350) She jumped off the tank and walked away, book and beach chair floating behind her in her magic.

Although she made a show of being nonchalant and unruffled, inside Chrysalis seethed. While it was quite true a queen labored only when the queen wished to labor, the fact was, right this moment, she wished to labor quite a bit… and couldn’t. The pony, curse her, had even caught up on the personnel report backlogs, the most boring chore the space center had to offer. (Elytron had achieved the same feat, but only by throwing out or failing to collect any and all reports due. Chrysalis suspected that would come back to bite her in the flank at some point.)

On the way back to the administration building she spotted Dragonfly galloping towards her. Dared she hope… was she, Chrysalis the almighty ruler of the changeling nation, needed? Had some emergency arisen which would allow her to demonstrate her superiority before her subjects?

“Well, hello there, Dragonfly,” Chrysalis said, and then trailed off… because Dragonfly wasn’t slowing down.

“Oh, hi, my queen,” Dragonfly said, almost casually. “Excuse me, gotta go use the telepresence and hit up Pinkie Pie for help. R4’s robot brain just slammed the ship into Minmus at about eighty meters per second in the sims, and I have no idea why! Marked Knee’s checking the circuitry, but I need help with the software. ‘Scuse me!”

“Wait a minute.” The phrase came out of her mouth not as the command it ought to have been, not even the polite suggestion it would have been coming from the pony. It was nothing more than a startled reaction to being blown off by, calculated disobedience aside, one of her more loyal subjects. To make matters worse, in order to keep talking to Dragonfly, Chrysalis had to walk- almost run- in pace with her towards the admin building. “Don’t you tell the robot probes what to do? I thought it was like a remote control or something!”

“Can’t do it this mission,” Dragonfly said, not breaking stride. “It takes light five seconds to get from Equus to Minmus. In five seconds anything can happen. So the probe has to be able to handle the landing all by itself. And that’s the single hardest thing about this whole mission!”

Chrysalis almost offered to help- almost. She only avoided the unforgivable gaffe because she had no clue, not one, what she could do to help. The bulls, Dragonfly, and that insane baker were the only people who knew how the insides of a robot brain actually worked. She certainly didn’t.

But she hadn’t the morale left to assert herself. Yes, she ought to demand proper respect due a queen. She ought to demand that Dragonfly ask permission to use her telepresence, which was in her throne room for her convenience and not so drones could go chatting with the enem… with their colleagues in other space programs. But all she said- all she felt like saying- was, “I see. Carry on, then.”

She stopped, and Dragonfly kept going.

I used to be a queen, Chrysalis thought. Buck it, I still am a queen.

There has got to be something useful I can do around here… something suitably royal, befitting my talents and training…

Footnotes:

(348) Liquid hydrogen is not kept stored long-term due to the intense energy cost of keeping it cold and compressed enough to remain liquid. There’s also the danger involved. Someone once said life will find a way; when it comes to tanks, hydrogen will find a way out. Thus, any H₂ desired for rocket fuel would be cooled and compressed only a couple of days prior to a launch, not stored on an ongoing basis. Other fuels tended to be preferable, anyway.

(349) The pony equivalent of the metric system was an invention of the short-lived Republic of Prance, which rebelled against the rule of Princess Celestia in 789 CR under the battle cry, “Let Someone Else Eat Cake!” Celestia reponded with a shrug and gracious wishes good luck, raising no armies whatever to restore her rule (which was eventually restored under the face-saving guise of “Protector of the Fancy Republic” in 802 CR). As a result the Fancy ponies have long, romantic songs about the valiant civilian lack of armies of Prance and the battles gloriously not fought at Mustango and Hossterlitz. Nopony sings songs about making every measurement a multiple of ten of some other measurement, even though this affected the history of Equus quite a bit more than anything else the Prench did (or didn’t). The global scientific community uses Fancy measurements because the non-pony races refuse to use the royal system of Equestria and couldn’t agree on any of their own systems.

(350) The dangerous part of that statement, as both guards were painfully aware, was that the word “reasonable” was defined by the queen and the queen alone… and subject to re-definition without notice.

“Fifteen seconds to orbital adjustment burn.”

Chrysalis sat at the capcom position, hooves on the controls for Mission R2. Some pony astronomer had wanted observations from a different angle and had thrown a few thousand bits at CSP to shift R2 into a slightly different orbit using some of the fuel remaining in its tanks. The procedure would require two burns, both very minor. There was no press in the VIP deck, nobody in the grandstands outside. Mission Control was deserted except for Occupant, Chrysalis, and George Bull, the only three controllers who could be spared for such a minor activity.

“Standing by, flight,” Chrysalis replied, looking at the controls. It took a second and a half for orders from those controls to reach Mission R2. As Dragonfly had very nearly said, anything could happen in a signal lag…

… but it wouldn’t. This wasn’t a landing. Mission R2 was in a high orbit around the moon and was going to stay there, with only a minor tweak to its altitude and orbital inclination. The probe had already been oriented into position for the burn, and all Chrysalis had to do was throttle up to ten percent for six seconds, then shut down the motor. Things might go wrong, but very few of them would kill the probe. A correction burn would cure almost all of them.

“Burn in three, two, one…”

“Engine to ten percent,” Chrysalis reported obediently.

“Shutdown in three, two, one-”

“Shutdown.”

And a few seconds later George Bull reported, “Successful burn. Go for second burn as calculated in one hour and fifty-four minutes.”

“Wonderful,” Chrysalis grumbled. “Shall I go fetch a book while we wait?”

“Oh, there’s no need for you to wait around here, my queen!” Occupant said eagerly. “We know you must have so many very important things to be doing! I’ll send a messenger for you in ninety minutes, if that’s all right with you?”

So many very important things to do.

Bah. Even the reporters don’t have any questions for me right now.

“Yes, that will be fine,” she said aloud, taking off her superfluous headset.

She’d just got outside the Mission Control doors when Gordon the Griffon ran up to her. “Excuse me, Chrysalis,” he said, “but I was wondering if I could talk with you a bit.”

On the one hoof, part of Chrysalis was livid that this griffon- not merely a subordinate but a junior pilot- addressed her so casually. But on the other hoof, it was something to do. “Be my guest,” she said. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well, it’s about Mission 22,” Gordon said. “Are we really sending Cherry up in just a capsule? Because I spent eight days in a passenger pod, with more than twice the internal space of the capsule, and I was feeling plenty cramped by the time that was done, lemme tell ya.”

“An… interesting point.” Chrysalis had put countless ponies and other creatures in enclosures smaller even than the capsule, but she’d never spent more than half a day in one. She’d never really considered issues of… elbow room. “Have you discussed this with Cherry Berry?”

Gordon shrugged. “The bossmare says, ‘We fly the mission with what we have.’ And that’s all she says.”

The part of Chrysalis that had been angry at Gordon’s casual approach flared up. Bossmare, is it? Well… well, yes, I gave the pony total control of the space agency, but… bossmare??

But the rest of her thought: This is an Important Thing. It might even be a Command Decision. Worth looking into. “Very well,” she said. “I know Cherry’s not looking forward to the experience.”

“Or you,” Gordon said. “You’re the backup pilot for Mission 22, after all.”

Well… um.

Come to think of it, Chrysalis couldn’t remember a day in the past fourteen months, the entire time she’d known that chirpy naive pest of a pink pony, when Cherry had been sick. Not one day. But it could happen… and you just couldn’t send an astronaut up on a fifteen day flight if she was sick, could you?

Which would mean she, Chrysalis, the taller, longer-limbed astromare, would be crammed into that capsule for fifteen days instead of Cherry.

The prospect appalled her.

“Let’s have a talk with our chief pilot,” she said, and led Gordon to the administration building.

---

“No way.”

Chrysalis and Gordon gaped at the pink pony. “Excuse me,” Chrysalis said quietly, “but when I said, ‘we’re using the passenger pod on the Minmus flight,’ I didn’t intend that as a suggestion.”

“No, I understood you,” Cherry said. “And I said: no way.” From the projection screen, she glared down at Chrysalis(351). “If we take the passenger capsule on Mission 22, we also have to put it on Mission R4, because the whole point of R4 is that it’s a dress rehearsal. If R4 works, we use the same hardware on Mission 22. And a passenger capsule adds too much weight and height to a mission that’s already got too many unknowns in it!”

“I refuse to possibly take your place and fly fifteen days in a ship so small that it practically counts as a piece of clothing!” Chrysalis snapped back.

“You know, we have extra pilots now,” Cherry said. “You don’t have to be my backup pilot anymore. You could assign Gordon, or Leonid, or Fireball.”

“Not it,” Gordon muttered. “So, so not it.”

“What you fly, I fly,” Chrysalis said. “That was the deal we made, remember?”

“Oh, don’t get up on your dignity at me!” Cherry snapped back. “You wanted to go to the moon. Not Minmus. By the time we go to the moon you’ll have a bigger capsule to fly in, with plenty of room. But adding a passenger cabin adds weight and reduces delta-V, and if I’m going to Minmus I want every bit of delta-V I can take with me. If it’s a choice between more fuel and a comfy cabin, I’ll bucking well be uncomfortable!” Cherry folded her forehooves and finished, “Because you recover from being uncomfortable a lot quicker than you recover from being lost in space!”

“Huh,” Gordon muttered. “She’s got a point there.”

Chrysalis ground her fangs in frustration. The pony wasn’t supposed to have a good point. She was supposed to argue and then back down in the face of her superior intelligence.

Buck it, she wasn’t supposed to be right!!

Thinking quickly, she came up with a new angle. “What about a low-orbit flight duration test?” she asked. “Push back the Minmus landing and make a new Mission 22 to see if someone can endure the capsule for twenty days. I’ll fly that- we can use a standard orbital package for that.”

Cherry shook her head. “I already thought of that,” she said. “To be valid, the flight needs a non-changeling pilot. Right now that means me, Fireball, Gordon-“

“Still not it,” the griffon muttered.

“-or Leonid,” Cherry finished. “You and Dragonfly would be out.”

“Why?” Chrysalis asked.

“Because you don’t eat actual food,” Cherry said. “The second most important test for such a flight would be whether the ship could hold the required rations, and whether the pilot could put up with them. You two would just gorge yourselves on love just before flight and live on water for the entire mission, proving nothing.”

“I’d prove I could spend three weeks in a shipping crate,” Chrysalis said.

“You could do that on the ground,” Cherry snapped. “All a flight would do is cost us a week of prep time and two to three weeks of flight time, during which we wouldn’t be going either to Minmus or the moon. Do you really want to give the Princess of Friendship and Being a Super-Genius a month of lead time?”

“You said we had plenty of time!”

“To do the necessary stuff to stay safe, yes!” Cherry snapped. “Putting somepony in a can and sticking them on a shelf for three weeks does not meet my definition of necessary!” The pony in the projection sighed. “Look, aren’t you supposed to be negotiating peace with Celestia or something? Why don’t you go do that until R4 launches? Because once R4 launches, you’re going to be just as busy as I am, just in case you really do have to spend fifteen days in the sardine can.” (352)

“In other words,” Chrysalis said, “you want me to quit taking it out on you and start taking it out on Sunbutt.”

“I didn’t say that,” Cherry said.

“Maybe not,” Gordon muttered, “but we heard you thinking it loud and clear.”

Footnotes:

(351) A situation Chrysalis would order fixed immediately after the call. She might not have anything worth doing at the moment in space flight, but she still had the royal authority to summon a technician, darn it.

(352) Canned sardines are a delicacy among certain pegasi, caught and packaged by coastal pony families. It’s very much an acquired taste, but it’s just common enough that “packed like sardines” is a phrase in Equestria just as it is in other worlds.

Somehow or other, in the many months since she’d declared her intention to go to the moon, Chrysalis had never gone to Canterlot in person… well, actually, there wasn’t any somehow about it. She’d avoided the pony capital, sending lawyers and diplomats in her place. She hadn’t wanted to come one step closer to the sun-pony she’d once just barely defeated in a direct magical clash.

But now here she was, not just in Canterlot but in a conference room of the royal palace itself, sitting next to the hive’s attorney of record and the smoothest-talking changeling she’d been able to find in the hive. “Okay,” she said, “give me the short version of where things currently stand, Trophallaxis.”(353)

“All right,” Trophallaxis said. “We’ve pretty much agreed on mutual amnesty for any attacks or injuries on ponies or changelings during the Canterlot invasion, right? Now, Celestia’s final goal is total assimilation of the hive into Equestria, with you demoted to a duchess. Obviously that’s out, so we’ve been pushing for interim agreements, and then- as per your orders- stalling on those as much as possible.”

“Which is a foolish tactic in my opinion,” Geneva the Griffon, sitting on the other side of Chrysalis from the changeling negotiator, put in. “I once more advise you that negotiations will proceed more smoothly, and with greater chances for success, after full diplomatic recognition by both sides and the appointment of ambassadors plenipotentiary.”

“Smoothness is overrated in negotiations,” Chrysalis replied. “Continue, Troph.”

“Right,” Trophallaxis said. “Anyway, we’re kind of operating under a preliminary agreement that’s preliminary to the preliminary agreement, if you follow. Canterlot’s officially blocking commerce to the hive until we agree to pay taxes, but that doesn’t hurt us because we run through shell companies and aliases- all technically legal.”

“Barely,” Geneva snorted. “And try to remember there’s a limit to what you can tell me under attorney-client privilege.”

“Yeah, she’s a barrel of laughs, isn’t she?” Trophallaxis chuckled. “Anyway, on the criminal front, Celestia’s offered universal amnesty for all crimes committed by the hive prior to the opening of negotiations last year, in exchange for inspections to make sure no new crimes are being committed.”

“Over my empty chitin!” Chrysalis said.

“Yeah, we figured,” Geneva said.

“So,” Chrysalis asked, “besides the cease-fire, what exactly have you agreed on?”

Geneva rapped her talons on the table. “This,” she said.

“The table?” Chrysalis asked.

“Celestia wanted a round tea-table,” grinned Trophallaxis. “We insisted that would demean the dignity of the proceedings.” With a proud smirk, he added, “We stretched that out for two whole months! Plus a week for the chairs!”

Chrysalis sat back in her own chair(354) and thought. Reliable old Pukey had followed her instructions to the letter… and now, now that she wanted some breakthrough she could take credit for, those instructions bit her in the abdomen. There wasn’t any groundwork for agreement on any point, because- by her own orders- her negotiators had stonewalled everything so thoroughly that the negotiations were, essentially, not even begun.

I can see only one possible gesture, she thought. And there’s no way Celestia will go for it. Even she’s not such an innocent, goody-two-shoes as that. But at least making the attempt will show me doing work for the hive, show me to be a leader.

And that’s all I actually want out of this charade, isn’t it?

“All right,” she said. “Troph, go tell the guard outside we’re ready to see Celestia.”

Fewer minutes than Chrysalis had expected later(355), Celestia and her personal assistant had taken their seats on the other side of the conference table, and after a few polite diplomatic nothings, Chrysalis took charge.

“My negotiators have kept me informed of progress,” she said, keeping her tone formal and diplomatic. “I am particularly intrigued by your offer of amnesty for my subjects. However, you surely know the conditions you offered are unacceptable.” She drew herself up as tall as she could in her chair, placing a forehoof on her chest in a very statesmarelike manner. “As sovereign of the changeling nation, I cannot accept investigators from a foreign power within my domain.

“But I have a counterproposal,” she continued, unable to suppress a little smile at her own cleverness. “Although there can of course be no question of accepting criminal liability for actions necessary to our survival, we are quite willing to offer such assistance as we may to repair any lives we may have damaged in our subterfuge. After all, it is in our interests to mend any loves we may have broken. A world with more love in it is a world where changelings will prosper.”

There. It sounds reasonable, at least from our point of view, and there’s absolutely no way-

“If you recognize that your actions have had consequences, then I have no choice but to accept.”

Chrysalis couldn’t stop her jaw from hitting the table, or making its best attempt at it.

Celestia smiled that little smile that Chrysalis always longed to wipe off her face, and then added those three words the changeling queen had used uncountable times before, to the terror of her subjects or victims: “On one condition…”

---

Every reporter in Canterlot, newspaper, television, and otherwise, seemed to be staring up at the changeling queen on the podium. Chrysalis tried not to let the flash bulbs dazzle her and kept her eyes focused on the disgusting words written for her on the paper before her.

“… I hereby offer, on behalf of myself and all my subjects, a full and heartfelt… uugh… apology… for the impostiture, kidnapping, and other forms of predation we have committed upon the ponies and other speaking races of Equestria.” There, the truly nauseating part was behind her now. “In the coming days, the Diarchy of Equestria and the Badlands Hive of Changelings shall establish a joint reconciliation bureau to examine the damage done and, where feasible, make such reparations as are possible at this late date.”(356)

The changeling queen took a deep breath to settle her stomach and concluded, “It is our hope that today’s preliminary agreement puts us one step closer to a final and lasting peace between ponies and changelings, and towards that day when all Equus’s speaking people live together in symbiosis and friendship.” There. Done. And she didn’t have to ever say it again. Hopefully. “And with that, I open the floor for questions.”

Camera shutters snapped and flash bulbs lit up the room as fifty reporters shouted for attention at once. One question managed to claw its way out of the ocean of noise: “Queen Chrysalis, how confident are you in the success of your upcoming Mission R4 to Minmus? Can a robot do what a pony can’t?”

By the last couple of words, the other reporters had gone silent, allowing Chrysalis to answer the question- the completely unexpected and unanticipated question. “Well,” she said, thinking swiftly as only a queen could do, “first, I object to the grounds of the last part of your question. Mission R4 is not a question of a robot doing what a pony can’t. On the contrary. Anything R4 does, a pony can do- and a pony will do.”

As pencils scribbled madly across notepads, and as television cameras ticked over, she continued, “Or changelings, or dragons or yaks or griffons or whoever. As you know. when Mission 22 launches, I will be Cherry Berry’s backup pilot. Should anything happen to her, Harmony forbid…” really, Harmony or whoever forbid, because I don’t want that flight- “…then I shall take her place and attempt the first crewed landing on Minmus. R4 is merely a test to ensure that whichever of us goes actually gets there.”

“Why go there in the first place?” another reporter shouted before any other pony could.

A question I asked the brain bulls and Cherry only about a hundred times. “Minmus is much smaller than the moon, which is our ultimate destination,” Chrysalis said. “Its gravity is much lower, which means landing and taking off again is much easier there than the moon. Going there gives us a safer place to test our procedures for landing on the moon, when the time comes. The main difficulty in the Minmus trip is its much longer duration. If we can get to and from Minmus safely, then we know we can do the same with the moon.”

“Isn’t this Minmus mission just a plot to do away with your greatest rival for control of your space program?”

Two thoughts scrambled to push their way out of Chrysalis’s mouth at once: one, of course, was, How stupid do you have to be to ask me that to my face? But the other reaction surprised her even as she stifled it: How DARE you accuse me of wanting to murder my best pilot? Between the confusion and the inner struggle, a third thought, far too honest to give reporters, slipped out: “Knowing who I am, don’t you think I have simpler and cheaper ways of disposing of rivals than that?”

Scribbling intensified.

Oops, Chrysalis thought.

Somehow she got through the rest of the press conference without another slip-up, not that it mattered. That one line would determine tomorrow’s headlines in all the tabloids and at least half the more reputable newspapers… and, of course, every single television news outlet.

But as she gave anodyne answers to questions, not one of which addressed the peace talks, she thought: Why in treachery’s name am I upset that someone might think I would do away with the pony? Of course I will, when the time is right. When the moon’s power is in my hooves and the princesses lie defeated before me. I’m sure even these foolish ponies realize that.

So why did I get angry?

Halfway back to Horseton, she gave up trying to figure it out.

Footnotes:

(353) Trophallaxis had been the changeling who went in to fix matters when an infiltrator’s cover went sour in a very big way. His ability to fast-talk ponies enough to persuade them to release a prisoner or agree to payment plans rivaled the infamous Flim and Flam. The only reason he hadn’t been snapped up for the space project was that, for all his intelligence, he was one of the laziest bugs in the hive. Even as a larva he’d turned his talents on fellow changelings to get out of one chore after another, including classes. Putting him in any position of responsibility beyond talking was a recipe for disaster, especially since the other bugs, who hated him except when they needed his help, called him “Pukey” behind his back.

(354) Which was, she had to admit, very comfortable.

(355) And a lot fewer minutes than Chrysalis would have made Celestia wait, were their positions reversed.

(356) This bureau would be a minor headache for Chrysalis for some time to come, although to her relief she was able to limit monetary and material payouts. Most of the bureau’s work consisted of finding the infiltrator who had disrupted particular pony families and helping them put those families back together. On at least two occasions, on the other hand, the bureau’s actions led to the divorce of pony couples when the pony who hadn’t been kidnapped insisted that, given the choice between imposter and the real thing, the changeling infiltrator had actually been the more considerate and loving spouse. Of course the vast majority of cases tended the other way, but the exceptions both confounded and amused Chrysalis anyway.

---

It towered over everything except the Vehicle Assembly Building, and even that mammoth structure had had difficulty containing it. In fact, it cost as much to build as the first VAB did- more, even. With the next tier of rocket engines still not quite ready to fly, the ship had been built out of all the older style parts necessary(357)- plus every piece of scientific equipment they could cram into the just-under-nine-tons destined for Minmus orbit.

It was the single largest spacecraft any rocket program on the planet had assembled yet… and even now, the rocket scientists of Changeling Space Program weren’t at all sure it was enough.

Chrysalis could tell her people were nervous. The occupants of CSP Mission Control’s bullpen checked and double-checked projected trajectories. Dragonfly, manning the remote controls at the capcom position, ran through the system tests with more alertness and care than Chrysalis could ever remember her demonstrating before. Occupant, wearing a shiny new white vest with a paisley print back, openly fidgeted as he went down the checklists.

All of them seemed edgy to the changeling queen, but she hoped her tour group of reporters and minor dignitaries didn’t notice. They didn’t seem to. The ponies and other creatures sharing the VIP gallery with her had their eyes glued to the telepresence screen showing the huge, overcomplicated spacecraft. Like the thousands of spectators in the grandstands outside, they had come to see a rocket launch- not to watch some changelings and minotaurs bumbling about in a large room full of desks.

The final go / no go calls were made.

Fiddlewing’s clear-out sound shrieked across the space center grounds.

Dragonfly moved her hooves, activating the probe computer, engaging its SAS module, and setting throttle on the liquid fuel engines to eighty percent.

Chatter in the VIP balcony went silent as the ponies and other dignitaries leaned forward in their seats, listening to the timekeeper count backwards slowly towards zero.

Zero came, and with it smoke, flame, and motion. A few seconds later sound joined these, thunder loud enough to shake the Mission Control building and rattle the grandstands outside- the sound of six liquid fuel rocket engines and four solid-fuel boosters igniting simultaneously for the first time in Equus’s space flight history.

Mission R4 took to the skies, slowly at first but with an inexorable acceleration.

Once the thunder of the initial launch faded, Chrysalis could hear the chatter of the mission control room relayed through the speakers into the little glass room.

“Having trouble holding attitude fifteen by eighty-three, Flight. Something’s producing a marked westwards rate.”

“I see it. Booster? Any comment?”

“Could be imbalance in the ship design or drag in the payload assembly. Without the fairings every little bump on the ship produces turbulence.”

“Two hundred ninety meters per second at thirty seconds. One point five gees.”

“Thirty seconds to max Q.”

“Flight, this ship is even more squirrelly than in the simulators. She’s fighting me every inch of the way up.”

“I see that, Capcom. Do your best. We really need it on prograde for staging.”

“Working on it, Flight. Wow, it’s fighting me.”

“Getting a slight shimmy in the first stage liquid boosters, Flight.”

“Okay. Anything we need to worry about?”

“Probably not. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

“Coming up on max Q. One point eight gees and climbing.”

And then, for the ears of the VIPs and press alone, a new voice cut over the mission control chatter- a deep, confident voice, that of a changeling Chrysalis had personally selected for this specific task.(358) “At one minute into launch, Mission R4 is on trajectory and schedule, approaching Max Q. Max Q is the point at which aerodynamic forces are greatest during launch. Shortly after Max Q the ship will stage, ignite its second stage engines, and go to full acceleration.”

The speakers switched back to the Mission Control headset circuit just in time for Dragonfly to say, “Okay, I’ve got her back inside the prograde circle, but I can’t hold her there!”

“Max Q. Coming up on first stage burnout.”

“Speed and trajectory within acceptable limits.”

The solid boosters and the liquid fuel engines burned out within a second of each other.

“Burnout! Staging now!”

On the screen, the lower quarter of the massive tangle of rockets appeared to drop off… and to collapse in on itself. A huge explosive cloud engulfed the lower part of the remaining rocket. Half the VIPs gasped with shock, Chrysalis possibly among them(359).

And then Mission R4 put the cloud behind it, three Swivel engines spewing white-hot plasma, the ship swaying back and forth for a moment before slowly, carefully, bending towards an easterly trajectory.

“Second stage shows three good engines, no fuel or oxidizer loss,” the voice of Warner von Brawn called from the bullpen. “All systems go for orbit!”

“What caused that?” Occupant asked.

“Drag from the main ship drew the loose stage components together,” von Brawn said. “Residual fuel in the tanks detonated. But nothing appears to have struck the second stage hard enough to penetrate the outer shell.”

“Flight, Capcom.”

“Go, Capcom.”

“The outer fuel tanks are burning a lot faster than I remember them going down in the sims,” Dragonfly said. “Did we mess up on programming somewhere?”

“No fuel or oxidizer leaks,” von Brawn reported.

“Tracking still shows us within parameters,” George Bull answered. “But the simulator does have an ongoing problem with optimistic fuel consumption rates.”

“We have more than enough to get to orbit and to Minmus’s sphere of influence,” von Brawn added. “But we may have to tap into the landing stage earlier than we anticipated.”

“Well, at least the ride’s smoothing out now,” Dragonfly said. “It isn’t trying to jump out of its prograde anymore.”

“Almost certainly aerodynamic issues with the design,” von Brawn said. “We’ll revisit that for Mission 22.”

“Ten seconds to SECO,” George Bull called out.

“Confirm, Trajectory,” Occupant said. “How are we on orbital insertion?”

“We’re going to need a large insertion burn,” Bull said. “Stand by… three, two, one, mark!”

“Shutdown!” Dragonfly called out, and then, “Throttling back up to ten percent for attitude correction.”

“Ninety by eighty-three if possible,” Bull replied.

As the sky behind Mission R4 on the projection screen faded to the black of space, the ship began slowly turning to a fully horizontal orientation.

“Full throttle for orbital insertion in one minute, ten seconds,” George Bull said. “And I do mean full throttle. We’re not going to get orbit on what’s left in the outboard tanks.”

“All right,” Occupant said. “But we will get orbit, right?”

“No problem,” Bull replied. “We’re still go for Minmus, never mind orbit.”

The smooth, deep voice took over the speakers in the VIP room again. “At four minutes into launch, Mission R4 is now coasting up and out of the atmosphere. Its engines will re-ignite shortly to complete a circular orbit in preparation for its Minmus insertion orbit burn. This gives Mission Control one last chance to evaluate all systems before committing to the trip from Equus to Minmus.”

One of the VIPs- some duchess or something out of Trottingham, Chrysalis thought- leaned over the seats and asked the queen, “Pardon me, but I rather thought you lot were already committed to going to Minmus.”

Fortunately, even if she hadn’t been in a position to make decisions, Chrysalis had had plenty of time to catch up on the decisions that had been made. “Of course we’re going to Minmus,” she said. “But how much we get to do there depends on how good our burn is. This is only the third time we’ve sent a craft beyond low Equus orbit. We want to be able to make plans or adjustments now, while we’re close to home and still have plenty of fuel, rather than be caught in Minmus local space with no fuel, no power, and no way to get our results back here to ground.”

“I see,” the duchess said. “It’s like stopping the carriage just out of town to check your luggage before you hit the highway for Canterlot!”

Chrysalis nodded and managed a smile, restraining the desire to compare, in exact detail, the uselessness of Canterlot’s unicorn nobility with the earth pony aristocracy of Trottingham. Microscopes would no doubt be required…

“Ignition!”

“Confirm main engine ignition,” von Brawn called out. “Twenty-eight percent remaining in outboard tanks.”

“That’s a bit low,” Dragonfly muttered. “Go faster, darn it!”

On the projection screen, Equus below it, Mission R4 burned and burned hard, speeding up to orbital velocity… or, at least, towards it. Long before any periapsis marker appeared on the trajectory projections, the outer two rocket engines flamed out, their tanks having been drained to keep the center tank filled until now.

“Outboard tanks empty,” Dragonfly called out. “Jettisoning tanks.”

The sound of a switch on Dragonfly’s console going click echoed through Mission Control. On the screen, nothing happened.

“Um… guys? I mean, Flight, Capcom?”

“Booster?”

“Glitch in staging sequence,” von Brawn said. “Try it again.”

Another click echoed through Mission Control, and this time on the screen the nozzles of the lander’s descent stage slid out of the now useless outer parts of the second stage like a foot coming out of a slipper. The still-live center stack of the second stage flew neatly through and out of the dead outer stacks, not so much as bumping the loose metal.

“Beautiful,” the reporter from the Canterlot Herald muttered to himself, seated two seats down from Chrysalis.

Fool, Chrysalis thought. We were supposed to have an orbit already. Now with just a single engine, it’s going to take forever to complete circularization. And dragging the empty stages? That was more wasted fuel. This could be trouble…

“Nosing up slightly to maintain apoapsis,” Dragonfly said. “Just a little. We lost a lot of efficiency somewhere up the line.”

“Okay, Capcom.”

“We lost a lot of efficiency,” George Bull reported. “And we’re losing more. Center stack at seventy percent.”

“We still have orbit on this stage,” von Brawn mumbled confidently.

“Yeah,” Dragonfly replied, “but what about after?”

Fuel burned away. The arc of Mission R4’s trajectory continued to widen on the projection, until finally- FINALLY- a periapsis marker appeared on the far side of the simulated planet.

“All right, throttle down and prepare for shutdown,” George Bull said.

“I know, I know,” Dragonfly grumbled, her hooves moving along the controls. “She’s holding well… steady… aaaaand shutdown!”

Mission Control went silent for a few seconds.

“Confirm shutdown,” von Brawn finally announced. “Twenty-seven percent remaining in main second stage. Orbital angle is seven point two degrees offset from the orbital angle of Minmus. Orbital correction burn calculations are underway.”

“Roger, Tracking,” Occupant said.

“Oh, boy,” Dragonfly said. “How much delta-V is that correction going to eat up?”

“It’s a rather large discrepancy,” von Brawn said. “Four, maybe five hundred meters per second?”

“Can we afford that and still have a Minmus landing?” Occupant asked.

The large blond minotaur grunted. “Possibly not,” he admitted.

“Then let’s go straight there,” Dragonfly said. “Look, there’s two points in the orbit where the orbital planes cross each other, right? So why don’t we hit Minmus at one of those points? How long do we have to wait until the next one?”

“It’s an idea,” George Bull said. “I’ll work on that.”

Footnotes:

(357) At least, the scientists hoped nothing more was necessary. The Mission R4 build had taken everything they could put on the pad. Adding any more boosters would take the jumbled bundle of rocket parts from the unwieldy to the downright unflyable. There just wasn’t anyplace left to put more delta-V.

(358) His name was Tymbal. He got the job because, although he knew next to nothing about space flight, he could read and write Equestrian fluently and possessed a naturally buzz-free voice. Smarter changelings had given him a script of things to say at certain points, plus a runner to bring freshly written script pages if and when the mission went off-script. Tymbal didn’t understand a word of it, but he sounded like he knew everything and that nothing could possibly go wrong, and that was what Chrysalis wanted and needed out of an announcer.

(359) But since no camera was pointed at her at the time, she would deny it afterwards.

“At nine minutes into the flight, Mission R4 is in a stable parking orbit. Mission controllers are currently verifying that all systems on the ship are ready for the outbound leg to Minmus and calculating the best time and duration of the engine burn which will send the ship out there. This is Changeling Space Program Mission Control.”

The VIPs began to shift on their seats, some hopping off completely. “Do you think there’s time for a snack before the next bit?” asked the mayor of Tall Tale.

“It might be best to hold off,” said the reporter for Solid Television, after a quick glance to make certain he wasn’t currently on-air. “Once the ship makes its next burn, that’s all the excitement for the day. It’s a long way out to Minmus.”

“Really?” the mayor’s wife, an earth pony with a live stolestoat draped over her shoulders(360), asked. “You mean we’re not going to see the landing today?”

“No,” said the reporter, who’d read the briefing materials provided by Occupant’s assistants. “Possibly a week from today. Seven days, at any rate.”

“Seven days?” the Tall Tale mare gasped. “We can’t wait around that long!”

“And I never intended that you should,” Chrysalis said, substituting a soothing, friendly tone for the growl she really wanted to throw at the bubblehead. “We don’t want to bore our guests, after all. But anyone who wants to return when we get to Minmus is quite welcome.” Especially that magic rat-scarf of yours. It’d be very welcome in one of Carapace’s cooking pots.

“Actually, I wanted to ask a question.” That would be Leaning Stanchion, the earth pony who owned almost all the train lines west of Smoky Mountain. He also had some interests in the railways linking Appleoosa to the rest of Equestria, which was why he’d been invited. “What was all that business with orbital planes and adjustments? I didn’t catch a word of that.”

Chrysalis had to set her jaw a moment to suppress the urge to grin with larval glee. Ah, good, I know this one, I know this one! (361) “Well, as we all know,” she said, “the sun and the moon move in the same path across our sky each day. That’s because the moon’s orbital path lines up with Equus’s orbital path around the sun. But Minmus, when Luna brought it closer, was above the plane of orbit. So when it began orbiting Equus, its orbit was sort of canted.” She tipped a fetlock to indicate the tilt.

“Now doubtless Luna could have put Minmus in line with the sun and moon- in what we call a coplanar orbit,” Chrysalis said. “But we think she left it as it is now as a sort of extra challenge.” She revealed a couple of extra teeth in her smile as she concluded, “The sort of challenge we changelings thrive on.”

“Well, all right,” said Stanchion, adjusting his top hat. “But why’s that a problem? Can’t you just go straight there?”

“It’s possible,” Chrysalis admitted. “But going into Equus orbit first gives us time to cope with the unexpected things that crop up in all space flights.” Like, for example, the fact that Dragonfly completely blew the attempt to achieve an orbit coplanar with Minmus, as she was supposed to do. “And right now our scientists are checking to see what our options are for a Minmus encounter without first adjusting R4’s orbit to match the inclination- that means the tilt- of Minmus’s orbit.”

“And how long will that take?” the wife of Tall Tale’s mayor asked. Her neck-rat yipped its own inquiry. “Shmumkins wants more popcorn, bless him.”

Shmumkins. And I thought ponies could not get dumber. “To calculate the burn, not too long. There are only two points on the orbits where it’s possible- the points where they cross. But it might be some time before we can-”

Chrysalis was about to say execute when the controller voice loop cut in to the VIP speakers. “Flight, trajectory.”

“Go, trajectory,” Occupant said.

In the VIP gallery, various rich and/or important ponies scrambled back into their seats.

“We have a burn for a direct shot at Minmus with no orbital inclination adjustment,” George Bull reported. “But it’ll take everything remaining in the second stage plus a healthy share of the two lander fuel tanks.”

“Okay,” Occupant said, shuffling his hooves on his work station. “Um... sorry, but I have to ask, is this burn less or more than what we’d have to do if the orbits were coplanar?”

“Almost exactly the same,” George Bull said. “Maybe twenty-five meters per second difference. As it happens, we’ll be catching Minmus almost precisely as its orbit lines up with the moon’s.”

“However,” von Brawn cut in quickly, “we need to execute that burn in the next nineteen minutes. We can’t wait for a second pass.”

“Okay. Whoa.” Occupant took a couple of deep breaths. “Okay, begin work on that. We’ll need to speed up the system tests for the outbound trip.”

“And get some snacks up here to the gallery!” Chrysalis shouted down through the glass.

“Yes, my queen!” Occupant replied, turning round and saluting.

Smiling, Chrysalis leaned back in her seat. It was a petty thing, and it violated mission controller voice protocols... but at least she’d been able to give one order this mission...

Footnotes:

(360) She’d been feeding it little tidbits all day, to Chrysalis’s quiet disgust. The thing had two beady black eyes, a tiny black nose, a tiny mouth of jagged teeth (the only attractive part of it, to Chryssy’s mind) and, presumably, four legs hidden under its unbelievably shaggy white fur.

(361) Again, Chrysalis’s unwanted downtime had given her both time and incentive to catch up on homework. In addition to pestering the busy scientists and engineers, she’d read every report related to Mission R4 cover to cover in her search for a Command Decision.

“... three... two... one... ignition!”

On the telepresence projector, standing out under the shadow of the planet behind it, Mission R4’s last remaining second stage engine lit up in a brilliant glow of plasma. The ship, partly lit up by the light of the rocket plume, began moving out of its parking orbit, hopefully outbound for its rendezvous with Minmus.

The hope came from the beings gathered in Mission Control, whose eyes were generally locked on the readouts showing the fuel remaining in the second stage, as it dwindled away.

“Ten percent remaining,” von Brawn called out from his station.

“Burn forty percent completed,” Dragonfly reported a little while later.

“Five percent remaining.”

“Standing by to decouple and to ignite landing engines.”

Each phrase of the exchange came some twenty seconds apart, but not a whisper, not a sound of any kind came between them. Up in the VIP gallery, even Shmumkins had stopped begging for crunchy little things to eat. The controllers and the witnesses all waited, watched, and listened.

And then, with a final sputter, the engine burned out.

“Staging!” Dragonfly said. “Landing engines ignition!”

“Confirm ignition,” von Brawn reported.

On the projection, shorn of the long fuel tanks and engine of the second stage, the lander and satellite continued the burn, two of the lander’s three Terrier engines firing at full throttle.

“Burn seventy-five percent complete,” Dragonfly said, her hooves frozen on her console, holding the remote-controlled robot ship steady.

“Landing tanks twenty percent depleted,” von Brawn said. “Eighty percent remaining.”

The velocity readout on the projection ticked upwards, far too slowly for any of the people watching.

“Burn ninety percent complete,” Dragonfly said.

“Stand by for engine cutoff,” George Bull warned.

“Fuel at sixty percent,” von Brawn said.

“Three... two... one, shutdown!” George Bull said, the last two words run together as a single word.

One of Dragonfly’s hooves blurred. “Shutdown!”

The glow of the Terrier engines on the projection faded.

“Hold heading,” George Bull said. “Trajectory shows a bit wide. Dragonfly, give me a tiny minimum-power burst.”

“Cycling engines on minimum power, aye,” Dragonfly said, wiggling the throttle. On the projection, the tiniest glow came and went in the landing engines.

“Again.”

Dragonfly repeated the exercise.

“All right, that’s good,” George Bull said. “The computer now shows a Minmus encounter with a periapsis of one hundred thirty kilometers- right where we need to put the satellite.”

“All right, good job, everybody!” Occupant said, actually slapping his podium with a forehoof.

And in the back of the room, the changeling known as Tymbal accepted a piece of paper from one of Occupant’s runners, gave it a quick read-through, and then turned on his microphone. “At thirty-three minutes into flight, Mission R4 is now on course for a fly-by of Minmus seven days from now. This concludes scheduled launch activities for today at Horseton Space Center, and we thank you for joining us for today’s launch. This is the voice of CSP Mission Control speaking.”

After turning off his microphone, he added, “Golly. I’m the voice for the whole space program now?”

“If you’re smart you won’t let it go to your head,” Dragonfly replied. “Trust me on this.”

With the microphones off Chrysalis couldn’t hear this last exchange, especially not while she was chiding the guests out to the commissary, the gift shop, or (preferably) the boat on the docks waiting to take them back to Baltimare. But if she had heard it, she would have told Tymbal to listen to Dragonfly. He might be the new voice of the Changeling Space Program(362), but the brains still belonged to her and her alone.

Footnote:

(362) And the voice of a great many other things, as well. The television reporters passed on word to their bosses of the announcer with his deep voice. Their bosses had also begun experimenting with playing music and other things on personal electric-powered devices that received radio transmissions and turned them into sound. Tymbal didn’t know it yet, but a modestly profitable future awaited him in the voice-over business.

“It’s pitching up- get back- get back- horseapples!”

The nav-ball began spinning on the control panel, lights flickering on and off in the little capsule. Then, just before Chrysalis could get to stronger language than horseapples, the lights all turned off. When they came back, they lit up the steady, still glow of launch standby rather than launch-in-progress. “Sorry, my queen,” Occupant’s voice echoed in her earphones, “but the computer said the rocket just broke into pieces from the uncontrolled tumble. That’s a failed sim, sorry.”

Disgusted, Chrysalis smacked the buckle of her flight couch harness open, using her magic to hit the latches on the capsule hatch. Even before she finished crawling out of the capsule she shouted up at the control booth, “What was wrong with that one? I did everything right!”

Up on the balcony overlooking the simulation chamber stood Occupant, Dragonfly, von Brawn, and Cherry Berry. The pink pony spoke first, saying, “It’s a really tough design to control. We're still having that problem where the rocket just wants to turn west.”

“You told me that two failed sims ago!” Chrysalis snapped. “I know that! I’m compensating! Why isn’t it working?”

“Trust us, my queen,” Dragonfly said, “when we say it’s tough, it’s really tough.”

“Big help you are.” Chrysalis got to her hooves and stretched. “Well, I suppose it’s your turn again, pony.”

“Not enough time before lunch,” Cherry Berry said. “And we have a Mission R4 meeting after lunch. Tomorrow’s the encounter, after all.”

Six days had passed since R4's launch. Chrysalis had spent precisely none of them lounging on an oxygen tank or poking her muzzle into random corners of the space program looking for something to command. Rumors continued to come from Baltimare that Twilight Sparkle and her friends were training hard for an imminent launch of the pink abomination, or as they referred to it, Equestria’s first dedicated reusable spaceship, the Amicitas. Giving up weeks of time waiting on Mission R4, weeks they could use training for Mission 22, made no sense, so Cherry Berry trained… and since Cherry trained, so did her backup pilot.

To Chrysalis’s mind, she’d merely exchanged the annoyance of feeling useless with the annoyance of physical training, impossible flight simulations, and poking and prodding by a changeling healer who had heard the queen’s threats too many times to be terrified into obedience anymore. That, in addition to whatever bits of hive business couldn’t be shuffled back onto Occupant or Elytron, and the occasional bit of schmoozing important ponies she’d rather stuff into a pod and forget existed.(363) She’d gone from enforced idleness to enforced overwhelming work load.

But, of course, that was the way space missions tended to be, so she didn’t mind. Much.

But there were limits, and Chrysalis fancied a half-day off. “Aren’t we all here?” she asked. “Everyone who matters, anyway. Let’s have the meeting now and get it over with. What’s it about?”

Von Brawn shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “Our original plan was to decouple the communications satellite after the combined package had achieved orbit, to leave it plenty of fuel for orbital adjustments. But since the landing stage is short on fuel, I recommend decoupling the satellite. It has enough fuel by itself to brake for Minmus orbit independently of the lander. That means the lander will save delta-V on its own orbital burn.”

“Okay. Any reason why we shouldn’t?” Occupant asked the room.

“Only a shorter lifetime for the satellite,” von Brawn said. “I believe it has enough fuel for its contracted orbit, but there won’t be much left for future orbital adjustments.” He locked his massive fingers together and stretched, his arms flexing under the minotaur's suit jacket. “On the other hand, losing the satellite before orbital insertion will give us a better baseline to determine if there’s sufficient fuel in the lander for landing and relaunch.”

“Okay. When do you want to do it?”

“A few hours before closest Minmus approach,” von Brawn said. “We need some time to determine the timing of both vehicles’ orbital insertion burns and to make sure both craft can operate independently. First thing tomorrow morning.”

“I have a question,” Chrysalis spoke up. “Is there any point bringing in the press for this? Either for orbital insertion or for the decoupling?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” von Brawn rumbled. “The exciting part will be the landing, and even if all goes well that won’t happen until the day after tomorrow.”

“Fine by me. Then do what you like,” Chrysalis shrugged.

Occupant blinked, then looked at the others. “I think that was an order,” he said.

“Good. Anything else?” Chrysalis barely glanced at the others. “Good. Let’s go eat.”

Cherry Berry raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you eat in the cafeteria?” she asked.

Occupant had already tied on a bib, and he looked at Chrysalis in clear expectation. “I’m not fussy,” he said. “Here is fine.”

Footnote:

(363) Three days after Mission R4’s launch, she remembered about the guard she’d stuffed in a pod and left in the closet. After releasing him and feeding him enough to put him back on his hooves, she shipped him back to the Badlands for cave-digging duty. She didn’t notice when, several days later, he was shipped right back by Elytron to resume his duties of making sure nobody stole the VAB.

Occupant stood at his station in Mission Control, the mid-flight controllers at their stations, the press gallery empty. Cherry Berry and Chrysalis were absent, training under the supervision of George Cowley, leaving the others to the probably routine business of turning one spaceship into two.

Probably routine.

“All right. Capcom,” Occupant said, trying not to look nervous, “go for satellite separation.”

“Right. Stand by.” Dragonfly reached over to a separate series of switches set up next to the main controls, installed specifically to wake up and launch the satellite. Using the usual staging system, it had been decided, posed too much risk of accidental premature decoupling. “Activating satellite probe core,” she said.

The satellite was Marked Knee’s responsibility. From his station in the far corner of the bullpen, he called out, “Satellite is awake and responding!!”

“Throttles all zero,” Dragonfly confirmed. “Testing satellite fuel pumps.” Another switch went click under her hooves.

“Fuel pumps show green!!” Marked Knee replied.

“All right,” Dragonfly said. “Decoupling in three, two, one...”

On the projection, a puff of smoke blew up from the tip of the spacecraft and dissipated into the void. The collar of the decoupler remained on its mountings, while slowly, gradually, the satellite on the lander’s nose drifted away into space.

“Looks like a good separation,” von Brawn said cautiously. “Recommend setting lander to automatic and assuming direct control of the satellite.”

“Okay, do it,” Occupant replied.

This took a few minutes. The control systems for Probodobodyne cores had been built so that CSP Mission Control could only control or reprogram one probe at a time. For missions like this, one ship had to be set to basically do nothing except keep itself alive before the controllers could talk to the other one. To make sure this didn’t end up with orders going to the wrong ship, or possibly to both ships, there was a careful, step-by-step checklist: confirm the current on-board program, set the lander probe to automatic operations, send the wake-up code for the satellite, run various tests to make sure everything’s operating correctly, and begin active operations. All of this took place on a lightspeed time delay of almost ten seconds round-trip.

To everyone’s relief, every step ran smoothly down to the very end, when the satellite opened its relay antennas. Once that was confirmed, Dragonfly said, “Okay, we have a satellite and we have a lander. But we don’t have ‘em in orbit yet. What comes next?”

“The satellite will reach its Minmus closest approach about ten minutes before the lander,” von Brawn said. “Twilight Sparkle designated a high orbit for the satellite, so its orbital burn will be shorter, and there will be a long delay before the next orbital adjustment burn to put it in its proper place. In the interim, the lander will execute a longer burn, dropping it into a very low orbit around Minmus, from which we may plan our landing.”

“What happens if something goes wrong?” Occupant asked.

“Well,” George Bull said, “the satellite contract required us to approach Minmus from behind to get the correct orbital direction. That means we get a small acceleration from Minmus as we pass by, according to Dr. Goddard’s equations.” The nattily dressed bull looked around and added, “Since Dr. Goddard isn’t here today, I can safely tell you that we call it the Old Bird Effect after him.”

There were only one or two brief chuckles, and von Brawn quickly moved in to fill the silence. “In practical terms, this means that if either vehicle fails to burn at the appropriate time, they will be flung entirely out of Equus local space, entering into their own separate orbits around the sun. A different trajectory could have brought them back to us if they missed the burn, but with the satellite contract that wasn’t an option.”

“Okay. So we have to get this right.” Occupant took a deep breath. “How long until the burn?”

“About two hours,” George Bull said. “I’ll have the burn procedures finalized long before then, for both craft.”

---

When the numbers came back, they were... worrisome.

“Is this the least fuel required to do this?” Occupant asked, gaping at the numbers projected on the wall.

“Gravity and momentum don’t change for us mere mortals,” George Bull replied. “We burn that fuel, or we lose the craft.”

By the time the burn was complete, the two landing tanks would have only about twenty-five percent of their fuel remaining. After that remained only the single tank reserved for the return flight.

“Okay, change of plans,” Occupant said. “We settle for a circular orbit for the lander for now. Once we get that, we need to talk about our options.” He sighed and said, “It’s time to talk about losing either the landing or the return.”

---

Two orbital burns later, the senior leadership, including Cherry and Chrysalis, sat down at the conference table. “Okay,” Occupant said. “We have the satellite in orbit with about one-third of its tank remaining. That’s more than enough to get it in the correct orbit.” He held up a hoof-full of crisp, new checks. “In addition, the Royal Astronomical Society has given us milestone prizes for fly-by and orbit of Minmus. So the good news is, the mission is fully paid for.

“The bad news is, the contract we have for temperature scans of the surface and near-orbital spaces is scrubbed,” he continued. “The contract specifies particular locations. If we went into polar orbit, maybe we could get the scans, but we didn’t. That becomes Mission 22’s problem.”

“We weren’t optimistic about nailing the target landing site anyway,” von Brawn rumbled. “We still haven’t scouted it.”

“So what’s left,” Occupant continued, “is the landing, return home, and all the science experiments the ship can do while on or near Minmus.” He tapped a sketch of the lander on the whiteboard. “The outboard tanks are down to twenty-five percent,” he said. “We don’t know if that’s enough to land on unaided.”

“Probably not,” von Brawn said.

“And even if it were,” George Bull continued, “we’d have to burn some of it just to get close enough to attempt a landing.”

“The center tank is full,” Occupant said. “We could ignite that tank and use it as part of the descent. But we don’t know if what’s left would get us off Minmus and back to Equus.”

“Possibly,” von Brawn said. “Based on our orbital calculations, Minmus gravity is quite low- a fraction of the moon’s."

“So, from where I sit,” Occupant said(364), “here’s our options. The lander definitely has enough fuel to make a low-level pass around Minmus, break orbit, and get home safely. We don’t get the landing, but we do get a lot of research and, more important, our ship back.” He tapped the center fuel tank again. “Or we land, using the central engine and fuel tank, and risk not getting the ship back. Some of the experimental data can be sent by radio, but we’ll lose most of it.” He looked around the room and added, “If anyone has any other possible plans for the mission, I’d be glad to hear them.”

Cherry Berry raised a hoof. “What if we could land, take off, and get back to orbit, but not home?” she asked.

“If we get to orbit,” von Brawn rumbled, “then getting home requires but little more delta-V. It’s not impossible, but it’s an unlikely scenario. We shouldn’t even consider lifting off from Minmus unless we’re committing to a full trip home.”

Cherry leaned back in her chair, thinking hard. “All right, but suppose we did it anyway?” she insisted. “Mission 22 could pick up the data, right?”

“At a cost of extra delta-V for the rendezvous,” von Brawn said. “I advise against it, at least for the first mission. Better to stay on the surface, transmit the data, and accept the losses.”

Chrysalis tried not to choke. So far as she was concerned, there wasn’t any reason to go to that little iceball of Luna’s more than once. Whatever magic power you could wring out of it paled by comparison to the power of the moon. It was only worth the trouble because it gave the pony and the eggheads a trial run for the moon landing- not for any other reason. Out loud she said, “I agree. It’s an unnecessary mission risk if we can radio the science home.”

“Anybody else?” Occupant asked.

This, Chrysalis thought, could drag out forever. “Look,” she said testily, “this is my space program, isn’t it? And the primary goal of the mission is to test equipment for Cherry’s landing, correct?”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant answered immediately.

“So if we don’t even try to land,” Chrysalis continued, “then the primary mission fails and we have to send another robot out there and waste another three weeks. While Twilight Sparkle is getting ready to launch her giant pink asparagus up in Baltimare!” She shoved the briefing papers in front of her away with a hoof. “We do whatever we need to do to get that landing. And we do it by making conditions as close to Mission 22 as possible. That means lowering orbit without using an ounce of the landing rockets. Just the return stage.”

Von Brawn actually raised his eyebrows at this. “And what of liftoff after the landing?” he asked.

“Worry about that if we actually land!” Chrysalis snapped. “If we bring back the ship, well and good. If we radio back some scientific data to keep Twilight Sparkle and the Royal Astronomical Society happy, dandy. But we went there to land a ship. And that’s what we’re going to do!” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “Now go make it happen. This meeting is adjourned.”

“Um, my queen,” Occupant said, raising a trembling hoof, “technically I’m in-”

“I said adjourned!”

“Yes, my queen!” The trembling hoof zipped back down.

Chrysalis left the briefing room, a spring in her step. That’s the way to be a leader, she thought. Cut through the blather and make things happen.

Whatever would they do without me?

Footnote:

(364) While standing.

“Stand by for fifty percent retrograde burn for eight seconds.”

“Standing by fifty percent retrograde burn for eight seconds.”

“Flight, we are go for orbital adjustment.”

“Proceed.”

“Orbital adjustment burn in five... four... three... two... one.”

“Ignition.”

Radio signals went out from the large transmitter dishes rising from the flat ground of Horseton Space Center. In a fraction of a second they hit one of the ESA satellites in geostationary orbit, which recorded and retransmitted the signal in a focused beam towards Minmus. The newly placed communications satellite there, still not quite in its assigned orbit, picked up the signal four and a half seconds later and relayed them to the slightly larger craft skimming the surface of the little planetoid at a mere nineteen thousand kilometers.

Within half a second of the time designated as the optimal moment for the orbital adjustment burn, the lander’s central engine blazed to life, just as it had for the first orbital adjustment burn several hours before. For eight seconds the engine burned, slowing the craft gently to an orbit that at no point rose higher than seventeen kilometers from the surface, with a periapsis just below ten kilometers in altitude.

Then the engine shut down, its fuel pumps ceasing, the little glow of plasma winking out.

Five seconds before, and over a million kilometers away, Dragonfly said, “Shutdown! Burn completed!”

“Acknowledge shutdown...” For five seconds everyone watched the screen. The telepresence spell didn’t have the limitations of lightspeed as radio did, but experiments in controlling probes via telepresence hadn’t worked out well, at least not so far. Thus, it took five seconds to see the probe receive the shutdown order, to see the little Terrier engine cease burning. It took another five seconds for telemetry readouts to receive the probe’s radio-transmitted reply acknowledging the order.

“Orbital adjustment confirmed,” George Bull said at length. “Good burn, no adjustment required. We have a safe parking orbit above Minmus.”

Sighs of relief went around the room. “Okay,” Occupant said. “Dragonfly, run all the experiments for low orbit and transfer the data to the storage can.” The storage can was a new bit of equipment for when a mission didn’t have an astronaut on board; the probe could send data recordings in detail to the can, where recording media would hold much more data than either CSP or ESA knew how to transmit and receive over radio links.(365) Mission R4’s data storage unit already held the data from experiments taken on the way down from high Minmus orbit, and a few minutes later the same experiments were repeated, recorded, and sent to join the previous batch.

While this was done, no one mentioned the single most important fact from the two orbital adjustment burns: the central engine and its isolated fuel tank still held well over eighty-five percent of its fuel.

But once the science was done, someone needed to speak up, and eventually it dawned on Occupant that that someone had to be him. As flight director, he was the one, Chrysalis notwithstanding, who made the final call on all flight issues. And the fact that they had used very little fuel to get a close orbit at a surprisingly low velocity changed the situation. “Okay, um, Flight to all stations,” he said. “Um, given the, um, the lots of fuel still in the return stage, I want a go or no-go for reactivating the landing engines and going for landing.”

“Vehicle is go, Flight,” von Brawn said.

“Trajectory go,” added George Bull.

“Systems are all go!!” Marked Knee added.

“Capcom is go,” Dragonfly said.

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Now I have another question. If we get a good landing, are we go or no-go for liftoff and return to Equus? Trajectory?”

“In light of the orbital adjustments and our low orbital velocity,” George Bull said, “I’d say we’re very go, provided we don’t slip up on the way down.”

“The algorithm we set for the probe should be able to deal with the terminal phase of the landing!!” Marked Knee said. “But if we can pick out a flat location, that would be for the best!!”

Occupant looked at the telepresence projection, which showed what looked like an enormous frozen lake behind and below the lander. “I think that won’t be a problem,” he said. “Anybody else?”

No takers.

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Then we’ll go for landing and return tomorrow. Everybody make sure the craft is secure. Then check on the satellite and calculate the next orbital adjustment burn for that. We need to know the timing on that. I’ll talk with the queen so she can make the announcement.”

Footnote:

(365) Remember that radio, for Equestria, is still an incredibly new invention. Although audio recordings, speakers and microphones have been in common usage for a century, the possibilities of radio passed the ponies by until the advent of magic-powered television inspired certain musically inclined entrepreneurs to explore the potential of the electronic-only technology. Electronic television hasn’t even been conceived of yet, at least not at this point in our narrative.

The morning dawned with bustle and activity at Horseton Space Center, almost as much as if an actual launch were scheduled for the day. A dozen unicorns poured extra magic into the telepresence spell, sending immense copies of its images into the air in front of the spectator stands outside the VAB. Boats and ships crowded Muck Lake, despite the fact that none of them could get close enough to see the relay screens. And the VIP gallery had filled with the better class of VIP, most notably Celestia, Luna, and Twilight Sparkle. The press and their cameras had actually been exiled to untenanted stations on the Mission Control floor- with the strict understanding that they were to remain absolutely silent until operations were concluded.

And with Cherry Berry having chosen to take a seat on the Mission Control floor, Chrysalis found herself in the center of the VIP hubbub, with reporters asking her for quotes and for information(366), with Twilight Sparkle babbling away ninety to nothing about this or that scientific marvel, and with various lesser celebrities greeting her with politeness and gritted teeth(367).

Even Luna dropped a line of conversation Chrysalis’s way, at a point when Twilight Sparkle was too busy with quill and paper to keep up her babble. “I confess,” she said quietly, “I have never seen one of my stars like this before. I can feel it out there...” She reached a hoof up and batted at the air, as if reaching for the distant little world. “I can feel it, but I never envisioned it. It is... quite strange.”

“It’s quite the experience for me as well, princess,” Chrysalis said politely. The lumpy ice ball which Luna had named “the little mouse” centuries ago looked like nothing Chrysalis had imagined or could have imagined. The eggheads had claimed that its just-below-freezing temperatures were maintained by a very delicate balance between the sun’s rays and the extremely high reflectivity of the tiny moon’s surface. Twilight Sparkle said something about “albedo”, which Chrysalis had thought was that stupid party game where you had to walk on your hind legs, bent backwards, under a pole.(368)

Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, had called it a scoop of mint ice cream in the hearing of two changelings, and now half the hive was asking whether the little moon was good to eat.

“I suppose it is,” Luna said quietly. “Today you have the entire land on a string. Every pony in Equestria must be wondering what you are doing this day.”

I’m laying the foundations for your downfall and removal, Chrysalis thought. Perhaps I shall banish you to Minmus once I have your moon under my power, and once Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Cadance, Discord, and whoever else are dealt with. “But of course,” she said aloud. “It’s only natural to be curious about the future. And that’s what this entire enterprise is about- exploring the future of all Equus.”

Luna shot Chrysalis a suspicious glance and went silent, which suited Chrysalis fine. Her little line had caught the attention of the four newspaper reporters who’d been permitted to retain their seats despite the demands by VIPs(369). She could hear their pencils scribbling away, and it gave her a little warm feeling in the frosty depths of her heart.

Unfortunately, Twilight Sparkle’s quill had stopped scribbling. “This is so amazing!” she cried out for about the forty-sixth time. “Who could have imagined, two years ago, that we would be able to send a machine to visit another world?”

“For my part, Twilight,” Celestia said, “I’m glad it’s only a machine in there. That’s a very risky journey for a pony to make.” Thus far, aside from greeting Chrysalis when they met that morning, Celestia hadn’t addressed a single word directly to her. She said quite a bit when Twilight’s jaw paused in its waggling, but Chrysalis couldn’t quite make up her mind if the sun princess’s little quips were directed at her, at her protege, or were really just honest expressions of her own feelings.(370)

“And yet,” the queen said, acting as if she and not Twilight had been the target of Celestia’s observation, “a pony shall make that journey quite soon, if all goes well today. Or possibly a changeling. Cherry Berry and I are both in training for that mission.”

That triggered a round of the same old questions, from the lesser VIPs and the reporters alike. Chrysalis smugly gave answers, many of which were less than fifty percent lie. Here and now she felt important again, as she ought to, being a queen.

Being the future absolute ruler of the world, she mentally corrected herself.

There was one niggling problem, though, one drop of spite in her delicious bowl of love: she didn’t feel like she’d earned this attention. Not on this mission. That hadn’t ever bothered her before- she’d taken credit for her subordinates’ actions many times before.(371) And the business with the peace negotiations and doubling down on the landing attempt had solidified her position as ruler of the changelings and head of this space program, thank you much. But it still bothered her... and she couldn’t understand why.

Of course, her mother had told her that no changeling was ever completely satisfied. Changelings weren’t silly, mindless little ponies, content with a tiny rut to guide their every hoofstep from cradle to grave. No matter how well-fed a changeling was, a changeling always wanted more... and a changeling queen more so than any of her subjects.

But this wasn’t that. This wasn’t hunger for more. This was... dissatisfaction, yes, but not the dissatisfaction of not having enough, not even the dissatisfaction of not wanting what one had. What kind it was, she just didn’t know... and not knowing spoiled all the enjoyment of this moment.

Fortunately, more enjoyable moments awaited. Already the countdown to the scheduled burn had dropped below one minute to go. The controllers on the floor tensed as the moment of truth came, as on the telepresence projection the little ship, the remainder of the colossus that had left Horseton eight days before, shone in the sunlight under an eternally dark sky.

A five second burn- five seconds, that was all- would put the ship on a suborbital trajectory terminating near the far end of a long lake near the equator. That would allow the entire length of the lake for a landing zone, in theory. The main obstacle to the plan- literally- was the over two thousand meter high bluff that overlooked the western end of the lake. If the craft came in on too shallow an angle… smash.

The timekeeper counted down to zero.

Dragonfly worked the controls, sending the command signals over a million kilometers away.

Five seconds later, right on time, the ship sparked to life, firing its engines almost invisibly, slowing down in its tight, lazy orbit.

Five and a bit seconds after that, the ship shut down.

And the gallery waited in silence, Chrysalis as tense as the others, for the word to come up from the bullpen. That word took entirely too long, and that itself told Chrysalis the burn had gone wrong.

“No joy on lake landing, Flight,” George Bull finally said. “The ship fired just a fraction too long. Trajectory shows us falling well short of the western end of the lake, on that large midlands region.”

“Copy, Trajectory,” Occupant said, all business. “What do you recommend?”

“If the ship had a pilot inside, manual corrections would be enough,” George Bull said. “Or if we had a larger delta-V margin. As it is, we have fifteen minutes to either abort or find an alternate landing site.”

“No,” Chrysalis whispered to herself, up in the VIP gallery. “We came to land, darn it.”

“Then let’s use the minutes.” Cherry Berry, according to protocol, had no role on the floor and no right to speak, but that didn’t stop her from taking charge. “We have fourteen minutes of safe coasting on inertia before we have to abort, and it’ll only take a tiny burn to get back into orbit. This is a full-scale simulation. Work the problem.”

Chrysalis growled. The pony was undoing in one little speech all the work she’d done to rebuild her image with the hive as its true leader. How dare that little pink-

“And remember,” the pink such-and-so concluded, “what Chrysalis ordered us to do. We didn’t go all the way to Minmus to turn tail and come back. We went to land. So let’s find a place we can land. That’s her orders.”

- ooooooooh, that little pink menace was getting gooooood. She’d given herself a Chrysalis-shaped umbrella for her violation of protocols while, at the same time, backing up the queen’s authority and openly subordinating herself. She’d pushed to the edge and then pulled back at just the right time.

Ninety-nine percent of Chrysalis knew that it was accidental, that Cherry Berry didn’t want her job and didn’t care or even understand about power struggles and manipulating support within the hive. That Cherry Berry, even if she was the pony, was only a pony. But one percent doubt had kept Chrysalis in power for more years than she cared to think about.

You bear watching, my little test pilot.

Meanwhile the lander on the screen coasted onwards, gradually picking up speed as it descended at a very shallow angle towards the snowy hills of Minmus.

Footnotes:

(366) A little of which, by chance, she actually knew, and the rest of which she faked.

(367) When an equine grits teeth, you may be sure it is expert gritting being done.

(368) Equines from the planet Earth, for all their ingenuity in getting over, through, or around fences, are physically incapable of this feat, and even less capable of conceiving of the action as a form of sport. Even the natives of Equus tend to regard it as something best contemplated after about three mugs of really strong cider.

(369) If the dragon ambassador had been able to fit through the doors, those four reporters would have been out of luck. Fortunately for them, Ember had other matters to attend to, and the mighty elder dragon she’d given her VIP pass to for the event now perched on top of the VAB, crowding the television cameraponies and about a hundred pegasi and changelings to the very edges of the roof.

(370) The idea that the three categories might not be mutually exclusive, and that Celestia could be doing all three at once, remained forever beyond Chrysalis’s comprehension.

(371) The way she reasoned it was: since she had to pay the penalty for her subjects’ many, many, MANY acts of blind stupidity, incompetence, and well-meaning but disastrous enthusiasm, then she deserved the credit when they somehow failed to fail. That credit was bought and paid for, and therefore it was hers.

“We’re running out of time here.”

Mission R4 was still skimming above the surface of Minmus, its altitude steadily dropping all the while. Back on Equus, the mission controllers watched the screen and worried.

“Nothing but hills and valleys!” Dragonfly grumped. “Not a flat spot for ages!”

“We need to make a decision shortly,” von Brawn said. “In about two minutes,” he continued, using a control to adjust the angle of the telepresence spell’s view of the spacecraft, “the ship is going to plow into the side of that large bluff. We need a landing space now, please.”

“Huh...” Dragonfly’s voice trailed off for a moment in a contemplative tone. “The top of that bluff looks kinda flat.”

“But is it?” Occupant asked.

“It’s sure flatter than anything else we’ve flown over!” Dragonfly snapped. “And it’s a choice between that, the hills, or the valleys. And I’m not going to try to land a robot on a five-second delay on a hillside or in a valley!”

"Make sure to keep the nose above direct prograde as you decelerate," Cherry Berry said. "If you just kill your forward momentum you'll hit the ground before-"

“Fly up, fly up, yeah, I get that,” Dragonfly snapped. “I’ve only been flying ever since I pupated!” Her hooves flew across the controls. Five seconds later, the lander put its engines forward and down, firing not just to slow the ship’s forward momentum but also to stop it falling. “Flight, Capcom, request comms discipline be enforced,” she continued. “It’s tough enough not knowing what I’m doing until five seconds after I’ve done it. I don’t need kibbitzing!”

“I’m sorry,” Cherry Berry said contritely.

“Don’t be sorry, be quiet!”

“I’M SORRY!!”

“No more talk except for velocity and altitude call-outs,” Occupant said. “Trajectory, that’s you.”

“Copy, Flight,” said George Bull. “Thirty-one hundred meters above zero elevation and falling. Velocity at two hundred ninety meters per second and falling.”

“Flight, what’s the altitude of that bluff?” Dragonfly asked.

“Twenty-three hundred meters, approximately,” George Bull said.

“Right.” Dragonfly ordered the lander to angle its engines a bit more downwards. Five seconds later it did so, the engines firing more towards the surface.

“Three thousand meters above zero and steady,” George Bull said. “Velocity two hundred ten and falling.”

Satisfied, Dragonfly reduced the throttle on the controls. “C’mon, baby,” she muttered. “Gotta get over that last valley...”

The valley before the plateau formed an almost black pit below the spacecraft on the screens. The walls ran so steeply as to be next best thing to sheer. Even a soft landing anywhere near that hole would be disastrous for R4. The ship coasted on, thrusting just enough to gradually slow the ship and keep it at an altitude that would carry it above the top of the plateau.

“Thirty-one hundred meters above zero, slow climb,” George Bull said. “Velocity one hundred twenty-five and slowly falling.”

“Just a little farther...” Dragonfly’s hoof eased the throttle back another couple of notches.

Minmus’s surface crawled past below the ship on the projection screen, the dark shadows of the valley giving way to the bright, shiny plateau top.

“Twenty-nine hundred meters above zero and slow fall,” George Bull said. “Velocity ninety-five meters and falling. We are now over the target zone.”

“Good enough.” Dragonfly slapped the throttle open to full for a couple of seconds, then backed off almost to nothing, pushing the control flightstick forward and then re-centering it. “Go to activate landing program,” she said, carefully bringing her hooves completely off the controls.

“Landing program loaded!!” Marked Knee reported. “Setting listening mode! Landing program activation code sent!”

Mission Control went silent as Mission R4, up until now basically a remote-controlled device, took over its own flight operations for the first time.

The landing program that activated five seconds later in the Probodobodyne computer core of the lander was, in essence, as simple as could be imagined. It had to be- the computer had to land almost blind, and thus couldn’t make any real adjustments. It couldn’t even tell reliably where the ground was. The program told it to reduce speed to twenty meters per second, adjusting thrust to bring its prograde vector directly below itself, further reduce speed to a range between three and seven meters per second, and cut off the engines when it stopped descending. That was it.

The program wasted fuel. With hundreds of meters to fall, it would have been more efficient to just drop until a single full-thrust burn would bring its speed to zero just as it touched down. But the computer didn’t know where the ground was- didn’t even know ground existed. It could sense the input from the navigation system built into the capsule, and that was all it could sense. The long, slow descent threw fuel away by the wagonloads each second, but it gave the controllers five seconds and a million kilometers away the maximum opportunity to abort the landing if necessary.

“Descent three hundred forty-five by ninety-two,” George Bull said, calling out the coordinates on the nav-ball. “Descent eighteen meters per second.”

Dragonfly’s hooves, which had stayed off the controls for the switchover to internal control, went back to them now, just in case.

“Twenty-five hundred meters altitude,” George Bull said. “Attitude at stable one, repeat attitude at stable one. Decelerating to seven meters per second.”

In the VIP gallery, Chrysalis leaned forward along with all the others as, on the screen, the green-tinted snow began rising up towards the descending ship.

“Twenty-four hundred meters, velocity four point five meters per second.”

For a moment, the ship seemed to hop on the screen.

“Burnout on landing stages,” von Brawn announced. “Continuing on return stage engine. Fuel in return stage at seventy-one percent.”

“Twenty-three hundred meters, velocity three point nine meters per second.”

The building, the stands outside, even the ships in the bay, all went silent.

“Contact.”

The ship bounced, turned rapidly, and rocked back and forth.

“Contact. Engine off.”

The lander settled on its six legs... and began tipping over. The plateau, apparently, hadn’t been nearly as flat as it looked at first. Then, long after it seemed like the lander had passed the tipping point, it froze in mid-flop and reversed, righting itself almost, but not quite, to a vertical position.

“Six feet on the surface,” von Brawn said at last. “Ship is holding itself upright using reaction wheels at full power. We can’t stay long, but we have landed.”

There wasn’t any cheering. After a moment, there was polite applause from the VIP gallery and from the stands outside. But no cheering, especially not from the control room floor. The near disaster had turned anticipation into worry among the spectators, including Chrysalis, while below the controllers fought to keep their own worry subdued. The mission wasn’t down safely. In fact, if the batteries ran dry, the mission would fail immediately...

... and the reaction wheels which, through the power of torque, turned the ship even without the rockets firing, those reaction wheels were burning through electricity far faster than the two small solar panels could resupply it.

Success or failure hung in the balance of a space probe that wanted to fall over.

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Dragonfly, get the experiments going and get them stored in the box.” He took a deep breath, then said, “Booster, can we get back to Equus with the fuel remaining?”

“We have to,” von Brawn said. “We absolutely can’t stay here. If the batteries go dry, we lose the probe. We have to launch before that happens.”

“How soon?”

“At current rate of consumption,” Marked Knee said in an uncommonly subdued tone for him, “seventeen minutes!”

“Whew. Okay,” Occupant said. “We have a little time, then. Booster, I need to know if the fuel on board is enough to at least get back into Minmus orbit.”

“Affirmative, Flight,” von Brawn said. “We can’t be certain until we drop the landing stages, but I believe we can make it back to Equus on what remains with a comfortable margin.”

“That’s good news,” Occupant said. “But we can make orbit and return the science data via radio transmission if absolutely necessary.”

“Affirmative,” von Brawn said. “But we can’t use the main transmitter for long streams on the surface, not as we are now. The batteries would drain to zero in almost nothing.”

“Right. Um.” Occupant thought a moment, then added, “We still have the temperature scan contract. We totally missed the landing site for the temperature scans, but we could still go for the aerial scans. Should we go for a polar orbit on launch?”

“Negative.” Von Brawn shook his head slowly. “We’ll be in better shape to fulfill that contract on Mission 22. With our current fuel levels, taking a polar orbit would require multiple burns to get a trajectory that brings us back to Equus. It puts return at risk. I recommend against.”

“Copy, Doctor,” Occupant said respectfully. “Capcom, we are NO STAY, repeat NO STAY on this landing. Prepare for immediate takeoff on equatorial trajectory once all data collection is complete and stored in the can.”

“Copy, Flight,” Dragonfly said. “Stand by. Temperature and barometic data already transferred. Just waiting on the imaging from the Science Jr. experiments.”

“I’m a little sad we couldn’t find room for goo cannisters on this flight,” Occupant muttered.

“We’ll have room for them next flight,” Dragonfly said. “What with not hauling a big heavy satellite along with us next time.”

“What do you mean ‘we’ and ‘us’?” Cherry Berry asked from the back row of the floor. “I’m the one who’ll be flying the next flight.”

“Data transfer complete,” Dragonfly reported. “Standing by for ascent burn.”

“Landing program cleared!!” Marked Knee called out. “Probe reports ready to receive!!”

“Go for ascent, Capcom,” Occupant said.

“Roger,” Dragonfly said. “Ignition.”

One. Two. Three. Four.

On five the lander on the telepresence screen lifted off, rising at an angle due to the uneven surface it had been sitting on.

“Decoupling landing stage!” Dragonfly said, slapping the staging button even as her other hoof wrestled with the control stick, ordering the probe to straighten up and come round to an easterly track.

The ship on the screen, after the usual five-second delay, split into three parts. The spent fuel tanks and engines, along with the landing legs, fell away, leaving only the central shaft of the much-reduced ship to fly up, straightening and then bowing towards the far horizon as it received its ongoing instructions from Horseton.

“Confirm staging,” von Brawn called out.

“Throttle to full!” Dragonfly said. “Let’s get this ship out of here and bring her home!”

Now the cheers, which had been withheld for the landing, erupted for the departure.

And much more quickly than it had descended, Mission R4(372) rose to the skies, leaving Minmus below it, burning for orbit... and then, after one loop around the lesser moon for course checks, burning again for home.

The celebrations moved out of the building and onto the grounds, into the village of Horseton, on board the ships in the harbor, and eventually clear back to Baltimare as the crowds dispersed...

... leaving four controllers- Occupant, Dragonfly, George Bull and Marked Knee- alone in Mission Control to complete the first of three tiny thruster burns which, over the course of as many days, would put R4’s comms satellite in the specific orbit requested by Twilight Sparkle.

Hardly anybody cared(373) about this last bit of business, and that was fine by the controllers. Their minds were already focused on Mission 22. They didn’t want any attention on this bit of minor orbital tweaking. They were busy with other things.

Besides, Mission R4 still had one final bit of important and dangerous work to do… return to the surface of Equus.

Footnote:

(372) Well, slightly less than half of it, anyway. The rest of it smashed itself to bits on Minmus’s surface.

(373) Except Twilight Sparkle, who actually made time to come to Horseton to witness the final burn... of three point seven meters per second, barely a hiccup for the satellite’s engines. But to her it was important. Even if it wasn’t her space program running the satellite, she regarded it as her satellite.

MISSION R4 REPORT

Mission summary: Fly by, orbit, and land on Minmus, collecting science data at all stages; insert communications / science satellite into orbit of Minmus; conduct temperature scans of specific regions on or near Minmus; return craft safely to Equus

Pilot: 2 X Probodobodyne probe core (controller: Dragonfly)

Flight duration: Ongoing

Contracts fulfilled: 1
Milestones: First flyby, orbit, suborbital flight above, and landing on Minmus

Conclusions from flight: We found some things that worked and others that didn’t. We’re just about ready to send Cherry.

MISSION ASSESSMENT: INCONCLUSIVE

Author's Note:

I originally intended to end this with R4's re-entry, but this chapter has been in a constant state of "mostly done, just editing" for weeks, and the re-entry paragraphs were so anticlimactic and underdeveloped I couldn't bear to keep them. The final fate of R4 will be the beginning of the chapter covering Mission 22.

Asparagus staging is a common thing in Kerbal Space Program- and, to a very limited extent, in real life rocket launches. The idea is, simply put, to dump fuel tanks when they're empty, the instant they're empty. The main drawback to asparagus staging in real life is that every additional booster, tank, engine, decoupler, fuel duct, fuel pump, etc. is another thing that could possibly malfunction... and the more of those you have, the closer the probability of a fatal malfunction comes to 100%. That's what did for the Soviet moon program- rockets that used over thirty smaller engines instead of a few large ones, practically guaranteeing that an engine would malfunction explosively and start a chain reaction that resulted, in one case, in the world's largest recorded non-atomic manmade explosion.

The "Old Bird Effect" is the Oberth effect. Stripped down to basic terms, it works like this: the gravity of a planet and the gravity of a spacecraft work on each other. When a spacecraft approaches a planet in one direction (behind it in its orbit, or on the outside track from the sun), the net result of this gravity pull is to transfer some momentum from the planet to the spacecraft. Approach the other way (in front of the planet or on the inside track of its orbit), and the planet slows you down.

Incidentally, Oberth effect is why the trajectory plot for our moon shots make a sort of figure eight. By approaching the moon at a point ahead of it in its orbit, less energy is required to slow down for orbital capture. There's also the side benefit- ah, but I'm saving that for Mission 22. Anyway, R4 did it the hard way because the satellite contract required a counterclockwise orbit.

Speaking of... flying this mission was MURDER. The rocket design you see here went through several revisions. I've used similar stacks to this for moon landings in past playthroughs of KSP. But this one, in KSP 1.6, seemed inclined to whip my ass.

The embarrassing thing is, the first five or six pics in this story were taken on what I intended to be a test flight... and during the flight I popped into the tracking center, forgetting that doing so would eliminate the opportunity to revert back to launch/VAB if another glitch popped up. But in the gameplay I had plenty of money available, so I just cancelled that flight without reverting...

... and came to regret it, as none of the TWELVE successive attempts to re-launch got to orbit. For whatever reason, I don't know why, the ship really did want to keep tipping westward, no matter how I turned it before or during launch. On the other hand, those failed launches nudged me to make a few adjustments to the ship to ensure that the first stage burned out more or less as a unit, making the ascent much more fuel-efficient.

This is the first mission I've flown using 1.6's new built-in delta-V calculations. They're deceptive as hell. And that's all I'll say about that for now.

Finally, the landing. From above, that bluff top looked flat... and on landing, it didn't look like that much of a slope. But every time I tried turning off SAS, the lander tried to flop over onto its side. I couldn't get it to actually rest on all six feet, and I don't know why. Given the circumstances, I treated it as a touch and go for the story, but I'd still like to know what was going wrong so it could be corrected for Mission 22... oh well.

Anyway, a few days ago I figured out that my monthly expenses (mostly debt service, thanks to the van, van repairs, and medical co-pays over the past year) were a LOT higher than my old budget. Hence, I'm starting a new updates-daily writing project to counter the decline in my Patreon (link: https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet ).

Details on the new project, whch begins posting March 1, here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/844653/stupid-sinus-infection-and-the-new-project-revealed

And please pledge to the Patreon, or give to my Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/krisoverstreet I need the writing to help reduce my debt and cover future medical bills (most important being work on my right shoulder, which has lost a good bit of my range of motion in the past year). I'm even thinking about backtracking and writing a Maretian follow-up focusing on the cave farm... but it's going to take some donations before I commit to that. I figured readers would prefer deciding what happens to the farm for themselves...

EDIT: Oh- and "bottle washer" refers to the lowest possible rung on the hierarchy chart of any scientific endeavor. It refers to a position that requires zero scientific acumen or actual responsibilities- as in, forget being the doctor, you're so far below the Igor that you need a telescope to see him. You clean up and fetch coffee, and you are to be regarded as slightly underqualified for even that. If a PhD in a research department refers to themselves as a "bottle-washer," they are indirectly praising the other people involved.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Twilight’s given up on a pure magic-thruster approach.

(Chuckles in Martian)

Fifteen days in a can, Chrysalis. Fifteen days where the only cherries I get are freeze-dried. I’m not looking forward to it.

(Martian chuckles intensify)

Equestria’s first dedicated reusable spaceship, the Amicitas.

(Respectful Martian silence)

In any case... yeah, this has grown bigger than one bug's efforts to steal the power of the moon. And she can't quite accept that. Or a lot of things. Still, there's a lot more than Chrysalis's inner turmoil to worry about. Mission 22's going to be tricky on multiple levels.

Also, I think you lost a bit of text during the Minmus orbital insertion. Dragonfly's "fly up, fly up" doesn't seem to have its context.

And for the record, I'd love to get a canon answer about the cave farm.

[ShadowLDrago]

But to her surprise, Cherry Berry wasn’t breaking under the strain.

HAH!

“That’s nice,” Cherry said. “If you can catch Occupant, he’ll give you an update on where things stand. I’ve got to go. Try not to let things fall apart until I get back.”

Oh boy is she in over her head.

One of the cardinal rules of being a queen, as Chrysalis understood it, was making oneself appear absolutely indispensable. Let on that your job could be done just as easily as the drunken hobo pony who shouted random nonsense, and you opened the door for your replacement.

Which you will not stand for.

“With respect, my queen,” the guard said, “it’s a choice between getting chewed out by you, or being chewed out by your AND Miss Berry. But don’t worry, I’ll see to it the paperwork for the guard roster and duty schedule is put on your desk the minute my relief-”

Not necessarily the best choice of words.

Chrysalis hissed the fourth guard into silence, then added, “The next changeling who thinks of some other thing more important than serving his or her queen will think again if they know what’s good for them!” Glaring at Occupant, she asked, “And what were you doing that required my guards to drag you over here?”

I get the feeling we're gonna find out.

And without the shell to make the satellite and lander aerodynamically smooth, the launch would go through fuel like a Manehattan rave party aficionado went through binkies. (344)

HAH!

… which meant four times as expensive.

Yes, but that could mean it could be four times as rewarding

“That’s a lot of junk,” Chrysalis said, for lack of any more cogent contribution to the conversation.

I've been there.

“Because Twilight Sparkle is moving forward with a crewed flight to the moon,” von Brawn said.

“WHAT???”

Yeah that's about the reaction I expected.

Chrysalis snorted, but the pony had made her point. Even she couldn’t think of a more horrible fate than drifting off into the unknown, beyond rescue, never to return…

That does sound pretty horrifying.

Everybody had important things to do… except the queen.

Hurts, don't it?

Chrysalis made a show of considering the request, make a soft tsk sound, and then said, “Oh, very well then. It is only proper for a queen to grant a reasonable request from her loyal and obedient subjects.”(350) She jumped off the tank and walked away, book and beach chair floating behind her in her magic.

That went well.

“Can’t do it this mission,” Dragonfly said, not breaking stride. “It takes light five seconds to get from Equus to Minmus. In five seconds anything can happen. So the probe has to be able to handle the landing all by itself. And that’s the single hardest thing about this whole mission!”

Yeah, you ain't wrong.

There has got to be something useful I can do around here… something suitably royal, befitting my talents and training…

And 3, 2, 1...

Come to think of it, Chrysalis couldn’t remember a day in the past fourteen months, the entire time she’d known that chirpy naive pest of a pink pony, when Cherry had been sick. Not one day. But it could happen… and you just couldn’t send an astronaut up on a fifteen day flight if she was sick, could you?

Not as far as I'm aware.

“Huh,” Gordon muttered. “She’s got a point there.”

She really does.

“Right,” Trophallaxis said. “Anyway, we’re kind of operating under a preliminary agreement that’s preliminary to the preliminary agreement, if you follow. Canterlot’s officially blocking commerce to the hive until we agree to pay taxes, but that doesn’t hurt us because we run through shell companies and aliases- all technically legal.”

The best kind of legal.

“Over my empty chitin!” Chrysalis said.

Figured.

Celestia smiled that little smile that Chrysalis always longed to wipe off her face, and then added those three words the changeling queen had used uncountable times before, to the terror of her subjects or victims: “On one condition…”

I hate those words.

“Knowing who I am, don’t you think I have simpler and cheaper ways of disposing of rivals than that?”

Not the best choice of words.

“Probably not. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

God I hope you're right.

On the screen, the lower quarter of the massive tangle of rockets appeared to drop off… and to collapse in on itself. A huge explosive cloud engulfed the lower part of the remaining rocket.

That's not good.

We want to be able to make plans or adjustments now, while we’re close to home and still have plenty of fuel, rather than be caught in Minmus local space with no fuel, no power, and no way to get our results back here to ground.”

That is smart.

“Glitch in staging sequence,” von Brawn said. “Try it again.”

That isn't good.

Occupant had already tied on a bib, and he looked at Chrysalis in clear expectation. “I’m not fussy,” he said. “Here is fine.”

HAH!

“Well,” George Bull said, “the satellite contract required us to approach Minmus from behind to get the correct orbital direction. That means we get a small acceleration from Minmus as we pass by, according to Dr. Goddard’s equations.” The nattily dressed bull looked around and added, “Since Dr. Goddard isn’t here today, I can safely tell you that we call it the Old Bird Effect after him.”

HEH.

“Um, my queen,” Occupant said, raising a trembling hoof, “technically I’m in-”

“I said adjourned!”

“Yes, my queen!” The trembling hoof zipped back down.

Yeah, that's about how I expected that to go.

While this was done, no one mentioned the single most important fact from the two orbital adjustment burns: the central engine and its isolated fuel tank still held well over eighty-five percent of its fuel.

Good.

Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, had called it a scoop of mint ice cream in the hearing of two changelings, and now half the hive was asking whether the little moon was good to eat.

Of course they would.

- ooooooooh, that little pink menace was getting gooooood. She’d given herself a Chrysalis-shaped umbrella for her violation of protocols while, at the same time, backing up the queen’s authority and openly subordinating herself. She’d pushed to the edge and then pulled back at just the right time.

Cherry is a clever horse.

“It’s sure flatter than anything else we’ve flown over!” Dragonfly snapped. “And it’s a choice between that, the hills, or the valleys. And I’m not going to try to land a robot on a five-second delay on a hillside or in a valley!”

Fair enough.

The lander settled on its six legs... and began tipping over. The plateau, apparently, hadn’t been nearly as flat as it looked at first. Then, long after it seemed like the lander had passed the tipping point, it froze in mid-flop and reversed, righting itself almost, but not quite, to a vertical position.

Good enough.

And much more quickly than it had descended, Mission R4(372)rose to the skies, leaving Minmus below it, burning for orbit... and then, after one loop around the lesser moon for course checks, burning again for home.

Could have gone worse.

[Bahamuttone]

being chewed out by your AND Miss Berry.

you

things to do that comfort her

than

[Booster Spice]

Dont worry Chrysalis. The universe hates that pink thing so much, its about to give it the Larson treatment.

Will chrysalis or anyone else get the idea of using a pod, not just for lifesupport but also fluid buffering for acceleration etc?

Wonder if the VA changeling is going to end up voicing a multi race sports game against alines along the lines of Space Jelly?

[OddDreams]

Usually the tipping west is due to center of mass issues. Too much power behind or too tall a rocket.

[KnightOwle]

Well done Sir, well done. As someone with nearly 200 hours of time in KSP myself, I applaud the attention to detail on the game aspects part of the story, and I can say you translate the minor problems the game sneaks in well. On an unrelated note, I personally can't WAIT for Twilight to attempt to fly that abomination of hers. I remember getting lazy and trying to fly up four chunks of my would-be space station in one go. Should be fun.

[Eroraf86]

Poor Chrysalis. She’s becoming superfluous to her own subjects.

[A.P.O.N.I.]

There is something to be said for having someone (Chrysalis) who's willing to make the calls. I found out recently at work that for the past eight years, we had slaved our process and definitions to what was, in the end, just one guy's opinion. Yet, he was the only one willing to commit to saying "This is the way it should be".

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

“With respect, my queen,” the guard said, “it’s a choice between getting chewed out by you, or being chewed out by your (you) AND Miss Berry. But don’t worry, I’ll see to it the paperwork for the guard roster and duty schedule is put on your desk the minute my relief-”

The end goal was to put a combined payload of nearly ten tons into Minmus orbit- that is, without touching any of the fuel in the lander. To put that in perspective, the largest orbiting vessel Chrysalis had piloted, the tourist special, came in just over ….(needs a number)….tons counting fuel and engine, just to Equus orbit… and that stack was dangerously tall and wobbly during the first stage ascent. Mission R4 was putting more than twice as much weight a heck of a lot farther out than anything other than Mission R2 had ever gone. That meant its booster had to be, if Occupant’s numbers were right, four times as large as the tourist mission stack…

Chrysalis snorted, but the pony had made her point. Even she couldn’t think of a more horrible fate than drifting off into the unknown, beyond rescue, never to return…

Yes, you'd be Lost In Space, a Voyager on a Star Trek. Can't have that.

[Kris Overstreet]

9442055 Dammit, you're right. And worse luck, I lost the link between two installments of Patreon livewriting. Rewriting that bit from scratch now.

[Always Breakfast]

“It’s sure flatter than anything else we’ve flown over!” Dragonfly snapped. “And it’s a choice between that, the hills, or the valleys. And I’m not going to try to land a robot on a five-second delay on a hillside or in a valley!”

“Fly up, fly up, yeah, I get that,” Dragonfly snapped.

I think you accidentally a few paragraphs?

[Kris Overstreet]

9442124 9442382 Fixing those now.

9442190 Unfortunately I am TERRIBLE at flying aerodynamic craft in KSP and worse at building them. So I won't be doing gameplay for the first flight of Amicitas, sorry.

[Kris Overstreet]

9442407 I think I did too. There was a link, but it got eaten in the process of cutting and pasting from the Google Docs Patreon livewriting sessions.

[KnightOwle]

9442421
Knowing the KSP engine, that's completely understandable. I once had a mod that added guns and cannons to the game and I distinctly remember that after trying to build an actual, ya know, SCI-FI SPACESHIP, the physics engine did it's best to reach out of my computer and physically assault me .

[Kris Overstreet]

9442555 Well, if you tried to build a functional TIE Fighter and expected the Kraken to leave you alone, I'm hardly surprised...

[A.P.O.N.I.]

Edit: Never mind; I see it's been addressed.

[Scyphi]

“Twilight’s given up on a pure magic-thruster approach. What she’s working on now is a reusable ship that can land like a pegasus- or like my biplane, to be more exact.”

Wait, Twilight intends to launch the equivalent of the space shuttle on a moon flight mission? That's pretty ambitious, but like Cherry, my reaction is full of skepticism of whether it could be done with the tech they've currently got. I'm no rocket scientist, but I know getting a space shuttle-like craft sent to the moon is going to require a lot more oomph than it would just to get it into orbit, and the more oomph, the more it weighs, and the more it weighs, the harder it is to get it where it needs to go, and the less likely it'll succeed.

“And that’s assuming there’s a long, flat spot on the Moon for that thing to set down. It can’t do a vertical landing.”

That's a good point too, I hadn't even thought of that. There isn't exactly a nice and neat paved runway already on the moon, after all.

Knowing Twilight, she could probably get it all to work at some point down the line, but yeah, it's likely not going to be anytime soon.

For a mission that was toying the line of failure almost the whole way, that actually went better than it could've, so at least the changelings have that going for them.

[Sozmioi]

> the largest orbiting vessel Chrysalis had piloted, the tourist special, came in just over tons

wow, so many it's just outside the range of masses you can use tons to express. That's danged heavy!

[Circut Breaker]

Have you ever seen Hidden Figures? I think the parrots from the movie may be able to fill that particular role.

[Kris Overstreet]

9442749 I thought I FIXED that!!

[DesiArcy]

7186351

Not as much as Robinson Crusoe, which was pretty much the original competency porn. . .

[andmos]

It had been all so clear in her mind. She would return to Horseton, console Cherry after that pink pony broke under the strain of running everything herself, give a few snappy orders and put everyone back to work. Chrysalis hadn’t even considered the possibility- the cold reality, really- that a space program that had functioned well enough without her to rescue three stranded astronauts could survive two additional weeks without her.

There is an comma missing in there mate

[Reese]

"Chrysalis and flipped the"
"Chrysalis had flipped the"?

"Chrysalis suspect that would come"
"Chrysalis suspected that would come"?

"round tea-table,” Trophallaxis."
"round tea-table,” Trophallaxis said."?

"and the princess lie defeated"
"and the princesses lie defeated"?

"“Capcom, flight.”

“Go, capcom.”"
"“Flight, capcom.”

“Go, capcom.”"?

"Occupant had already tied on a bib, and he looked at Chrysalis in clear expectation. “I’m not fussy,” he said. “Here is fine.”"
I'm not entirely sure what this means, sorry.

"“I’M SORRY!!”"
Huh. Seems a bit unusual behavior for Cherry Berry here. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Another quite enjoyable chapter; thanks for writing!

Ah, and good luck with your expenses, and your health.

[Litho]

The "Old Bird Effect" is the Oberth effect. Stripped down to basic terms, it works like this: the gravity of a planet and the gravity of a spacecraft work on each other. When a spacecraft approaches a planet in one direction (behind it in its orbit, or on the outside track from the sun), the net result of this gravity pull is to transfer some momentum from the planet to the spacecraft. Approach the other way (in front of the planet or on the inside track of its orbit), and the planet slows you down.

What you're talking about is called "gravity assist" or "slingshot maneuver". Oberth effect is a different thing: it's the fact that during a fly-by, the deeper in the gravity well you do a burn, the more energy you get for the same delta-V. (Kinetic energy is proportional to the square of speed, so the higher speed you have, the more energy you get from the same change of velocity; and the deeper in the gravity well you are during a fly-by, the higher speed you have.) So Oberth effect is usually used together with a gravity assist, but they are separate things.

[Neece]

I still ship those two, and no matter what I'll always believe they got together after The Maretian

[Kris Overstreet]

9443282 Occupant is a changeling anticipating lunch, and as mentioned in a previous chapter, Chrysalis generally oversees redistribution of edible love.

[erictheblue]

This is the first mission I've flown using 1.6's new built-in delta-V calculations. They're deceptive as hell. And that's all I'll say about that for now.

this is how i feel about the "center of lift" function when trying to design aircraft in KSP. it keeps over-estimating the lifting force of RUDDERS, so if i try to follow it, i wind up with aircraft so tail-heavy they literally BACK-FLIP one second after takeoff!

[harts fire]

woo hoo a grate chapter love the stress grate righting.

[Reese]

9443545
Ah, right, thanks!

[erictheblue]

9442555
i once saw a you-tube video of someone using that mod: he build a giant turret on the landing pad, and shot all the buildings to pieces...
i mean, a turret with 6 other turrets attached, EACH of which had 6 MORE turrets attached...
he said he tried to take it one step further, but the game crashed.

[ShadwSonic]

9442171
I'm half worried that's a spoiler for the sequel fic, since I'm waiting for THIS one to finish before starting it... but the other half thinks it's funny.

[Iron Comet]

Occupant is Gene Krantz. Love it.

[Kris Overstreet]

9445380 Did you mean Gene Kranz? I wasn't thinking of Cernan when writing Occupant...

[Iron Comet]

9445406
Your right, I fixed it. And I just finished his book a while ago too. Stupid mistake. Still brilliant reference though.

[Kris Overstreet]

9445694 Yeah, well, pretty much anyone writing a Mission Control scene for "space race just getting started" from an American perspective is going to gravitate towards Kranz. Mr. "Failure is Not an Option" wasn't the first Mission Control Flight Leader- that was Christopher Kraft- but he defined the stereotype, as seen in Apollo 13. Occupant, of course, is much more deferential than either Kraft or Kranz ever thought of being. Both men came up from the military and lived by the ethos that a leader can be right or wrong, but absolutely MUST be definite.

[Iron Comet]

9445710
I have stood inside the launch bunker where they 'lit the candle' under Allen Shephard. The guys inside had as much riding on the launch as the man atop the rocket. Mostly because they dont get a second shot but also because the launch bunker was only a few thousand feet from the Rocket Pad itself.

Making Occupant fill the spot you did is both brilliant as a referance and logical that it's where he would eventually end up with the dutys Chrysalis gave him. Do got to wonder where he got the vest though. Mail order would also be his style.

[ComradeCheese]

Yay new chapter

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

That strange westward force you described that stays the same no matter what orientation you were rotated to...

That's definitely an aerodynamic behavior. I can't think of anything else it could be short of a bug.

Looking at the the R-4 SuperKludge (and how long it is) and assuming your flight profile is a gravity turn with a pitchover to the east, that means that as you climb, your pitch-over is going to expose more of the lower rocket to the free stream. Especially if it's an aggressive one coming off a hard straight-upward acceleration that vanilla KSP kind of enforces. And with the lower part of the rocket being much more surface area than the upper part, it will try to 'snap back' like an oversized arrow with big feathers. Yes, the rocket structure CAN act like fins when they get proportionally large enough. Terrible fins, but fins. And those four SRBs on it are a LOOOOOT of surface area.

What makes this worse is that as your fuel depletes in the lower stage, you start to become more aerodynamically stable and the 'feathering' behavior increases. Your center of mass moves up the rocket and the light parts will try to line themselves up behind it. This behavior is compounded by dynamic pressure in that the faster you go, the more aerodynamic force you get. The location of your steering surfaces made them nearly useless since they were towards the middle of the rocket. And while you have gimbaled engines, their steering force is based on throttle, where as the steering force from fins is directly proportional to your aerodynamic forces.

Essentially, what you were experiencing was shuttlecock behavior. Your rocket wanted to go 'STRAIGHT' at all costs. With you trying to set it into the eastward flight track with the pitch over, that made it look like it wanted to pitch back west... Which it would have done from momentum... right before your rocket teeter-tottered and snapped in two.

To fix this, you need to do the following:

1: You MUST get operational steering fins down to the base of the rocket. No matter what speed you're doing and what aero forces your rocket experiences, your steering will proportionally match them with fins in that spot.

2: Ease off 'full power' ascents until you're above 10 km. The rocket may take off like a slug, but once you get going, especially in a kludge that was eating fuel as fast as the narrative seemed to imply, you'll go from 'barely enough TWR' to 'ALL THE Gs!' in seconds. Double-especially with large SRBs that vanish solid mass into smoke in under a minute. 'Full Powah!' results in you reaching very high Qs, and thus very high aerodynamic forces, very quickly. Max Q isn't a fixed value for any rocket. It's just a marker. I suggest tuning to hold G forces around 2 Gs in most Kerbal climb-outs.

3: Start your pitch over to downrange as soon as you clear the tower while your speed is low and aerodynamic forces are minimal (but you can steer). Not a big one, but a degree or three to get the rocket into a more natural gravity turn. This gets more important the longer the rocket gets, as that shuttlecock behavior gets more exaggerated the longer you get and the faster you go.

As a side note on asparagus builds. "You're Doing It Wrong."(TM) Though I don't know if that's by design for the story, or you don't know it. Or if it's just a case of 'don't have the tech on the tree'. But a proper asparagus design uses fuel lines that pipe outboard tanks into the core while firing ALL of that stage's engines at the same time. The outboard engines and tanks burn out FAST, but when you drop that weight, you end up with a fully fueled core stage without the added weight of two dead engines and their tanks/hulls.

[Kris Overstreet]

9446889 I don't think R4 got to two G's until in upper atmo on second stage. Certainly not on the first stage.

The fins are where they are because, without them, the rocket goes into uncontrollable tumble pretty much the minute the first stage assembly gets dropped. I had to keep the first stage as it is, without asparagus staging, because if the liquid fuel burns out before the solid fuel boosters the ship becomes uncontrollable, and if the solid fuel boosters burn out with the liquid fuel engines firing the vessel has a TWR of less than 1 until the third stage is dumped.

And yes, I'm fully aware my first stage isn't a proper asparagus staging system. With all the weight above it, it can't afford to be. All of this is a kludge, because the proper solution to this "not enough thrust" problem is "get bigger engines".

[Goldfur]

I used the Oberth Effect in my "Cosmic Lotus" story and called it the Oldbird Effect – almost exactly what you came up with. However, you described a slingshot maneuver.

[whoofian]

“If you recognize that your actions have had consequences, then I have no choice but to accept.”

[whoofian]

“Getting a slight shimmy in the first stage liquid boosters, Flight.”

That is something you never want to hear in a control center

[Kris Overstreet]

9447755 Needed more struts.

[mishun]

“That’s all,” Chrysalis said flatly. “Didn’t one of the bulls tell me that orbit is halfway to anyplace else?”

Well, that seems like a valid concern since Twilight has slow but very efficient way of exchanging food for Δp available (engine model "pink unicorn") --- just add some small landing module. Although, Starlight in priinciple could probably descend and ascend on her own

“are you aware that the tank you’re lying on is full of oxygen kept at over three thousand pounds of pressure per square inch?”

Why? It stores cold liquid.

Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, had called it a scoop of mint ice cream in the hearing of two changelings, and now half the hive was asking whether the little moon was good to eat.

Since it isn't made of love the answer is probably "no"

[Karmada]

Hydrogen is a bit worse than you describe, because if you cool it, you will get 75% orthohydrogen which has higher energy than parahydrogen (differences in nuclear spin). It relaxes spontaneously and generates heat.

In practice it means that liquid hydrogen spontaneously generates heat after you have cooled it and compressed it into liquid. It is "not much" but can cause serious problems if you are not aware of this effect (like boil away most of the hydrogen, or over-pressure in the storage vessel).

Hydrogen is an evil fuel!

[Condray]

By approaching the moon at a point ahead of it in its orbit, less energy is required to slow down for orbital capture. There's also the side benefit- ah, but I'm saving that for Mission 22.

I'm getting some real "Apollo 13 using the free-return trajectory" feels from this!

As for control problems on ascent, I really have to think it's what AdmiralTigerclaw mentioned, especially if your ascent profile had you aiming above your surface prograde marker. Without flying it myself, I'd say try a early, small pitchover into the gravity turn, and then just follow surface prograde all the way until you're in the upper atmosphere (I had a Buran-style shuttle that actually used asymetric thrust to pitch over, and all I had to do to get to orbit was hit the spacebar a couple times). Or you could go old-school Kerbal and have a near-vertical ascent until you're in the upper atmosphere, and pitch over HARD then, but then you'd just be trading control/atmospheric losses for gravity losses.

9442685
Luckily for Twilight this is using KSP as a basis, where there are people that not just do Shuttles, but full SSTO's to the outer planets successfully. Although the furthest I got with one was a Minmus landing and return before switching to Realism Overhaul. Easiest way to land them though isn't like a plane normally does (no air to keep your trajectory flat enough, you can do it but it takes some REALLY fancy flying or a lot of RCS), but to go butt-first like a normal lander, and pitch-over at the last second using your landing gear shocks and low gravity to not break apart.

[Scyphi]

9450852
I kinda figured KSP's a bit forgiving on that matter. Still think Twi's jumping the gun immediately working towards that, though, and I worry it'll only nip her in the butt--it has already in the story before now. I think part of Twi's problem is that she's thinking a little further than her means will allow, being too ambitious trying to bite off more before she and her team are ready to handle all of the daunting tasks accompanying them. But that's my viewpoint on the matter. *shrug*

Gosh, that landing technique sounds dicey even from a KSP viewpoint.

[Kris Overstreet]

9450852 I usually turn down the ball to about 10-15 degrees off vertical about 50 m/s, very early on, then to 45 degrees about 10,000 m altitude, and then gradually down the ball as I pick up speed. A proper gravity turn doesn't seem to happen with SAS on, or at least it never does for me... and I've learned NOT to fly without SAS if I have any possible option otherwise.

[Condray]

9451064
You can get reasonably close to one if you just set SAS to follow prograde once you hit Mach1 or so, although I don't remember if the core used here has anything past just basic hold position. On some craft I've actually been MORE stable with SAS off, since it often overpowers the control surfaces for small corrections. And there was my first Mun mission in my only stock 1.6 campaign where I forgot to put a pilot on, and had to do the hole thing with just manual control. That sucked.

And if you don't mind letting mods to the work for you, MechJeb's ascent guidance works pretty well.

[Kris Overstreet]

9450924 It's the kind of thing you should definitely have auto-strut mods installed for. I've seen it done in videos. Since the CSP save is played vanilla, I obviously won't be taking that route.