Sol 294-295
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 298
ARES III SOL 294
Turning wrenches while wearing space suits was annoying, but there wasn’t any choice. Today Mark and the ponies were swapping out Amicitas’s old electrical battery in favor of two of the hydrogen cells from the Hab. That required a mana battery to allow Starlight Glimmer to levitate the battery down safely. It also required four of the pony ship’s five remaining crash benches to be dismounted and part of the floor pulled up to disconnect the long, skinny battery. And, of course, since the battery was far too long to fit in Amicitas’s airlock, that airlock had to be open for the whole procedure.
It had taken them all four hours the sol before to shift the stored hay back into the habitat deck so the bridge could be depressurized. Removing the seats and floor, and then disconnecting all the electrical cables from the old battery, had required another hour and a half today. And now that that was done, Mark, Fireball, and Dragonfly stood looking at the vaguely car-engine shaped battery.
“It’s gonna be a tight turn getting this into the Rover 1 shell,” Mark said. “How did you get this thing in here in the first place?”
“Teleported it into the cabin, then levitated it into place,” Dragonfly said. “Starlight probably has enough power for the teleport, with a fifty percent battery.”
“Could,” Starlight said over the pony comms. “Could, but won’t. The more magic we conserve, the sooner all the batteries are full, and the sooner we can enjoy more time per day in the field.”
“Do you think we can lift it by hand?” Mark asked. He got on his knees, reached down, and worked his gloved hands into the gap. “I can just barely fit my hands in here.”
“No way,” Fireball said, pointing to his own suit. Mark’s suit relied as much on its materials as on air pressure to keep Mark at one bar. The pony-made suits were more Apollo-era, which meant more puffy. “Gonna need the pony.”
“Starlight, could you-“
“On my way.” There followed some grunting and some cursing in Equestrian over the comms. Climbing Amicitas’s boarding ladder with a sixty-kilo metal-clad rock strapped to your back, on top of an already bulky spacesuit, would never be on top of anyone’s list of fun pastimes. Eventually Starlight heaved herself over the threshold of the open airlock, got all four hooves on the deck, and walked inside, battery on her back.
“Hold still a moment,” Dragonfly said, trotting over to have a look at Starlight’s right forearm. If anything happened to the new patch…
“It’s fine,” Starlight grumbled. “Moves a lot easier than before. Chafes a bit more, though.”
“Gotta check anyway,” Dragonfly said.
“Mind if I look?” Fireball was next to her, staring over Dragonfly’s head at the limb.
“Don’t DO that!” Starlight complained, flinching back. “How do you move that fast and quiet, anyway?”
“Stalking wild rocks,” Dragonfly muttered. “Gemstones are easily startled and will run away at the first sign of danger. But Fireball is a renowned hunter among dragons. No gem escapes him.”
Fireball didn’t answer. He just smiled. Dragonfly’s back was to him, so she couldn’t see it except for a distorted reflection in Starlight’s faceplate, but she could count the teeth based on the combined amusement and threat coming off the dragon.
“It’s holding up okay,” the changeling said hurriedly, deciding she’d made a mistake with her joke. “Let’s just get the battery out of its hole. We can maneuver it into the airlock so that you can see it to levitate it down to safety. Once it’s on the ground, we should be able to carry it.”
“We, huh?” Fireball asked. “Like ‘we’ carry airlock to cave?”
“Let’s just get this done,” Starlight grumbled.
“No, wait,” Mark said, holding up a suited finger, “I too wish to hear more of this ‘we’ thing Dragonfly speaks of. Because I don’t recall a bug-pony as part of the ‘we’ that day. Do you, Fireball?”
“No, sir,” Fireball replied, shaking his head solemnly.
“You know I can feel you both laughing inside,” Dragonfly muttered.
“So enjoy the snack,” Mark said. “And then get out of the way while the dragon and I each rupture an intervertebral disk.”
“A what disk?” Fireball asked.
“He says you’ll both throw out your backs,” Starlight muttered.
Fireball stood up straight, almost knocking his helmet on the ceiling of the bridge. “Will not,” he insisted. “Dragons are strong. Dragons are… are… mighty, yes, mighty! My scales are like shields! My teeth are like swords!”
“Your tail is a thunderbolt,” Mark said.
“Yes!”
“Your wings a hurricane.”
“Yes!”
“And your breath could really stand some mints. Maybe some chewing gum.”
“Yyyyyyywhat’s that again?”
“Just reminding you that for all his strength,” Mark said, “Smaug was a bit of an idiot.”
Fireball snorted, and for a moment his helmet bowl clouded up with smoke. “That’s not me,” he said. “But I still can carry battery by myself. I’m stronger than all others here put together.”
Dragonfly chose this moment to step back into the conversation. “But what happens if you do hurt yourself?” she said. “Not likely, but what if? Would it be permanent? How long would we have to go without that strength while you lay in a bunk recovering? Don’t show off. Be careful. Work together. Okay?”
Fireball thought about it. “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right. But I still could do it.”
Cherry Berry, who stood with Spitfire on the ground outside, called up over the comms, “Are you going to remove that battery today or not? We’re burning EVA time.”
“Sorry,” Mark replied, stepping back to the edge of the bridge, leaning against the pilot’s controls. Dragonfly and Fireball went to the opposite corner, near the sealed hatch and ramp leading to the habitat deck, giving Starlight plenty of room to lift the battery out.
Starlight doffed the mana battery from her back, set it down, and switched it on. Blue light surrounded her helmet, and a ray leaped out to grab the battery down in its well. After a second, she grunted. A couple of seconds later, she crouched forward on her hooves, grunting louder, as the light grew brighter. Under Dragonfly’s hooves, the deck began to tilt.
“Hold what you have, Starlight,” Cherry Berry said, gently but firmly. “I want you to very little bit lower the power you put into that lift, all right? Very slow. Bit by bit. Do NOT let go, just ease down. Okay?”
“O… kay?” Starlight’s response was both strained and confused, but the light lessened, and after a second or two the deck became level once more.
“All right, let go slow,” Cherry said. “All the way. Just back out of the spell.”
“Already done,” Starlight said, the magic light winking out around her helmet. “I didn’t realize that battery was so heavy.”
“It isn’t,” Cherry said flatly. “But it’s still bolted into the ship. You had the back end up off the rocks and were about to tip the ship onto its side.”
Dragonfly could vaguely see the shadow of Mark’s head behind his reflective faceplate, shaking in confusion. “But… but how could Starlight lift up the ship while she was standing in it?” he asked. “The rules of leverage ought to make that impossible!”
Dragonfly let the others talk about magic and its unexplainable effects while she contemplated the possibility of melting into the deck. She’d forgotten all about the bolts securing the battery into its hole. All eight of them. Which required a special socket extension that her toolkit didn’t include because removing the battery wasn’t a mission service item.
And she’d forgot them. Forgot the bucking obvious thing, because there had to be bolts there. Otherwise any slight change in momentum would send the massive battery rattling around its hole, bashing things up…and that fact had gone clean out of her-
“Dragonfly,” Mark asked, “how do we unfasten the battery?”
“Oh look!” Dragonfly said. “My suit battery’s about to hit zero! Time to go back in-“ She went silent, then used her forehooves to mime a dead radio. Yes, it only bought ten minutes before she had to admit to being stupid, but that was ten minutes in which she could think of some way to make herself feel a little less stupid.
She ignored the temptation to make it a ten minute head start back to the cave and the cocoon. No matter how nice it would feel, she’d still be the same idiot when she came back out.
MISSION LOG – SOL 295
Today we completed swapping out the old pony ship battery for two of the fourteen remaining Hab hydrogen cells. The hydrogen cells are hooked up to the ship’s power systems, and since they’re connected to Hab power, the Hab power regulators have access to them for drawing down or recharging as needed. Tomorrow I’ll finish linking the old battery into the cobbled-together rig I used to replace Rover 1’s power system when the pressure vessel was removed from its chassis.
Getting the battery out required a lot more of Starlight’s magical abilities than we expected. The tool required to undo the eight bolts that hold the battery to the bottom of the hole it sits in isn’t among Dragonfly’s kit, and I don’t have enough ratchet extensions to reach down even if any of my sockets fit. NASA only gave me the four sockets that the Ares mission specs call for, anyway.
But after yesterday’s strategy session in the Hab, we figured out that Starlight could cast a simple spell to make the bolts unscrew themselves. The only problem was, we had to temporarily repressurize the pony bridge for the spell to work, because, according to Starlight, it wouldn’t be “sonic enough” otherwise. I don’t know if that’s a joke or serious.
Anyway, once that was done we depressurized the bridge again, got the battery on the edge of the airlock, and let Starlight lower it to the ground. It’s lighter than the big airlock was, but not by too much, so I was glad of Fireball’s help to carry the thing over to the Rover 1 radio shack. Then Starlight levitated up the two hydrogen cells, and I spent the rest of the day wiring them in while Dragonfly rigged some makeshift clamps to hold them in place in the back of the cabin. They’re a little too wide to fit in the same trench as the old battery, but they weigh half as much even combined, and they provide one hell of a lot more power.
The weight is the main reason we decided to do this now. Moving the batteries took less magic than moving the whole ship would have… and by lightening the ship a little bit, we made it easier to move the ship to mount it on the Rover 1 chassis when we get that far.
Tomorrow we’re going to take the sole spare Hab lighting strip, plus one of the strips installed on the Hab, and use them to replace the two bulbs that still work on the pony ship. Then, while I do electrician things to get the pony ship battery back into the circuit, the others will plan strategy on the Big Lift.
Looking at the to-do list, I’m feeling very good. Despite the long bit of time off and all the delays, we’re now through sixteen of the twenty-nine action items for the Whinnybago project. Twenty-seven, really; I’ve decided that Pathfinder is not going with us on the trip. We can’t spare the power for its heater, and it weighs too much for its utility once we’re rolling. NASA won’t like it, but I’m pretty sure that about two weeks after I tell them I’m not doing it, they’ll think it was their idea.
And the best part is, once the mods are done, the Hab will still have its current power, we’ll still have our hay barn, and the only thing we’ll have to do when we leave is install the pony life support box from the cave.
I think we’re going to be at loose ends for things to do for about a hundred sols. I wonder how that will affect things.
Anyway, no D&D tonight; just 70’s reruns. Starlight says she has to rework the campaign after Dragonfly impaled the king. See, she figured out he was about to order his guards to kill us so he wouldn’t have to pay the reward for clearing out the bulette. Of course, none of us blame Starlight for not allowing Landgrave Cleftchin to claim the throne by right of conquest afterwards, though we do think having to fight our way out through two hundred royal guards and a level 5 wizard vizier was excessive.
Well, one hundred ninety-two guards. I charmed the vizier by reminding him that the king’s heir was likely to give him the pink-slip no matter what he did to us, and the last eight surviving guards failed their will checks and ran screaming into the night like little babies. Fortunately Fireball and Cherry put Dragonfly’s paladin to sleep long enough for us to carry him out, because none of us were on board with Cleftchin’s proposal to take on the other four battalions of the guard in the same way.
We now know why no Earth probe has found any Martians: murder hobos like us got to them first.
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Strangely enough, it sounds like I've been the DM for a group in nearly the same situation, with probably close to the same level of facepalming..... though it did become interesting seeing how they tried to deal with things... and by interesting I mean 'a hilarious trainwreck of medieval proportions'
Did you just make a sonic screwdriver reference?
You are awesome.
It's just notD&D without a little murderhoboing.
"so he couldn’t see it except for a distorted reflection"
"so she couldn’t see it except for a distorted reflection"?
"and a ray of lit leaped out to grab"
"and a ray of it leaped out to grab" or "and a ray of light leaped out to grab"?
Ahhh, poor Starlight. Murder Hoboism is a problem most DnD universes suffer from.
What she really should have done is set the campaign in Neighpon so honor and duty were important. The Tenants of Bushido have saved many a game from breaking down in my RP group. While its value as a real life system is a complex issue I don't want to go into, as something to motivate the PCs to stop murdering NPCs nothing is better.
Although explaining how a culture so similar to the Far East evolved on Equestria would be....an interesting discussion.
8994156 I think you mean tenets. Tenants of Bushido would be residents of a samurai-themed apartment building.
Also, Starlight was setting the crew up for a TPK by sneak attack of the guard, which failed because Dragonfly struck before all the guard were in position to capture the party. Under the circumstances, they were less murder hobos and more justifiable homicide hobos.
Well hell, Starlight wanted a reason to have the kingdom degenerate into Game of Thrones level infighting and factions. A murdered king will definitely do that.
I'd like to know how this managed to make it into the final design; this is a spaceship, not MJOLNIR armor. Specially designed tools that only fit one particular set of bolts or only work with one panel are a pretty bad idea, especially on objects whose scrammings spell certain mission failure, and possibly loss of astronaut life...
Ah, the dreaded murder-hobo. I feel your pain, Starlight.
Our most recent session, my players found a kidnapped nobleman being tortured in a goblin cave. After freeing him, they promptly stuck a longsword in his hand and told him to take point, culminating with them shoving him into a room full of goblins so he could soak up the first round of damage. Then he died, and since he was the plot-critical NPC of the current adventure whom they were hired to rescue, they're in for a rough time.
8994168
Starlight tried to deceive a born deceiver. It did not go according to plan.
8994088
I thought Starlight meant that she'd need to be able to hear what bolts she's moving.
8994168
I don't know why, but I feel like that would make a good setting for a skit.
And now I am conflicted....I mean Dragonfly is a Paladin, specifically a Lawful Good one, so she could have detected the fact that the king was evil or chaotic and thus her actions were justified.
But on the other hand, trying to claim the throne afterwards is clearly going full Lich King, depending on how she planned to rule.
And I suspect that the 4th ed (I think they are playing 4th ed. Need to leave for work now, so sorry if I got my edition wrong due to not having time to check) core doesn't come with the Paladin of Freedom variant. So Dragonfly needs to be careful with the Chaotic actions.
Also, thank you for your insight into the political climate last chapter. I am happy you assessment MOSTLY agrees with mine, but I must admit, I did not consider the fact that the Changelings belief of the "Bad Old Days" may actually make them rebel should Queen C want to return to that path.
8994080
How did you get off Mars?
8994183
To be fair, Equish designers tend to err on the side of durability rather than common sense.
I take it Starlight didn't mention that she can fly? How long before Mark compares her to a superhero from the comics with all the things Starlight can do with her magic? Superspeed, flight, Forcefields, Lasers, Teleportation, Transmogrification, Cloning, Time Travel, Invisibility, Size Manipulation, ect. How many superheroes is wrapped up into the small package that is Starlight? (Quicksilver, Invisible Woman, Cyclops, Dr. Strange, Giant Man, etc)
8994183
Remove the enormous, almost literally too-big-to-fit through the door battery during a mission and replace it with what, exactly—the nonexistent onboard spare battery? And who said the bolts were special? If they require a 50 mm socket and you're only equipped with 25 mm and smaller sockets and wrenches for all the things you could realistically be able to repair or swap out during a five day trip, then you'd still have a problem. Following that line of thought to its logical conclusion leads to carrying all the tools and supplies necessary to build another spaceship from scratch; on the surface it's not a bad idea, until you realize what all that entails.
Booga booga, better batteries build bigger buffer of bounded potential!
Or some bull spit like that.
8994168
No, he means the Tennant. To go with the sonic screwdriver reference.
8994303
If something's smoldering behind or underneath the battery, I'd feel a lot better about at least being able to move it to extinguish the burning item if I were a member of the crew, to say the least. There's a reason why agencies like NASA hilariously over-prepare for missions, to the point that they end up simultaneously under-preparing (case in point, square pegs and round holes). If you're a mission planner, there comes a point where you need to ask yourself "what could possibly go wrong with this?" and then also brainstorm feasible solutions for the ones your astronauts can actually DO shit about... it almost seems like Starlight was intended to be the get out of jail free card in the ESA-CSP's eyes at this point
8994341
Admittedly, a powerful, well-educated unicorn does make for the ultimate Swiss army knife (now with built-in 3D printer and spare part library!).
I see your point about a battery fire, though the ponies' fire plan might be to simply don suits, bleed the ship to vacuum, wait for the fire to die out, then repressurize the ship. They have redundant, effectively infinite air and water supplies, remember, and can somehow don their suits absurdly fast.
battery
do you mean bulette(s)?
8994371
This is true... who needs a set of precision tools when you have unicorn telekinesis?
Sadly, that fire plan DOES strike me as something that would be in the ESA-CSP Flight Manual, though; it's fairly simple, rather crazy, and just as likely to end in total loss of crew as it is to work as intended
8994341
There are parts that are thought "What can go wrong with this" and come up with a "Nothing relevant". The battery can be bolted on the side of the pressure hull without anything reachable behind, inside it's own tub exactly to isolate it from other parts and so you would need a two feet long extension and a socket of a size that is not used anywhere else on the ship. It's not so out there as an idea.
Edit: Just for clarity, the Nothing Relevant includes "Yeah that can go bad, but if it goes we are simply fuc*ed, nothing we can do"
8994386
And transmutation, filtration and physical isolation by compound, non-Maxwellian energy concentration, teleportation…
You know, working together Dragonfly and Starlight could probably have easily made a crude socket for the battery bolts out of crystal from the cave—or heck, even regolith!—albeit at a cost of stored magic.
8994388
You mean to tell me that nobody, not even Twilight freaking Sparkle, stopped to think "Hmm... this wire here, it could potentially be the starting point of an electrical fire..." at any point in the design and mission planning process?
... ... ...
What's sad is that I could actually buy that. As much as I love this story, CSP!Twilight isn't exactly one of Equestria's best and brightest
8994401
That, and they're conducting crewed interplanetary travel with the technological equivalent of a Vostok capsule built like a tank. They simply haven’t had the time and experience needed to expose all the problems only slightly less likely to kill you than launch or reentry. Heck, look at Mark and his safety-glass helmet in the book, and that’s after over eighty years of manned space flight during which were at least six manned Moon landings, twenty years of ISS construction (over two hundred EVAs and counting, not to mention the Salyut, Almaz, Skylab, Mir, and Tiangong programs), who knows how many years of Hermes construction and two prior manned Mars landings to that point.
That said, magic certainly makes things easier. Need a heat shield? Just pump water through it; (lots of) cold water comes in from Equestria at one end and hot water or steam goes back at the other end. Mid-launch abort, meet emergency teleportation spell!
8994407
Also true. It took Rainbow Dash almost dying during EVA for the ESA to adopt the CapCom model of mission communications...
8994156
8994168
One of the most common sentences of a player newly introduced to the Legend of the Five Rings (Rokugan) is "What do you mean with "looting is taboo here"?!"
8994401
There is no explicit mention on WHERE the main wires are connected. But it is described as a LARGE car battery. So it is probable that the terminals are on TOP and so also the cables. We are talking about one part that is big, unwieldy and put in a place that should never be touched. It's like thinking of having the tools for working on the main engine of the service module of the Apollo.
If any romantic subplot is going to come careening through this story like I predicted, this is when it will happen. It might even land on Sol 400.
8994378
That's a good question, considering the actual pronunciation.
A save against fear would be will, not fortitude. Unless 4e is weird. 5e it's a charisma save I think.
8994509
Ugh... It's always so cringy to see the pronunciation of foreign words spelled out in english... [I'm not a native english speaker so I've got my idiosyncrasies on how the writing maps to pronunciation]
However I doubt that Bulette would be pronounced Bou-lay in french, as with a final e at least one t would sound out. e.g. the cheese Raclette has the t sound at the end.
8994516
I'm not saying that the expected pronunciation is canonical French. It still doesn't follow standard English.
8994485
Primary difference being that the CSM was intended to be jettisoned prior to reentry, while the Amicitas mana battery was intended to remain with the crew for the entire duration of the mission.
And come Apollo XIII, it was a damn good thing that the LEM was capable of being used as a lifeboat, though not comfortably. That the LEM was independently powered and had a descent stage engine that was powerful enough to perform course correction burns. That enough spare materials were packed out of an abundance of caution that a Frankenstein filter could be cobbled together to solve the CO2 problem that arose as a result of 3 guys being supported by a set of filters intended for 2 (which was the reason why that procedure was included in the flight plans for Apollo XIV and onward).
All possible because of simultaneous over- and under-planning that extended to the design process, and all of which played some part in maintaining the legacy of never losing an astronaut in space (although Challenger came pretty damn close... it was still in the atmosphere, though). The ponies clearly didn't go THAT far, which (as pointed out by Misplaced Mage) is pretty much the result of inexperience. FTL exploration using Apollo era equipment was never going to end well if we're being completely honest with ourselves...
BTW, Dragonfly herself stated that the bolts required special socket extensions to remove, and the terminal locations say nothing of where the wiring harness routes from there. Even in my truck, part of the wiring harness ends up behind and/or underneath the battery because parts located there need to be fed power...
8994401
On the contrary, she IS one of Equestria's best and brightest.
You may now take that to its horrifying logical conclusion.
As for the failure modes, such as the smouldering or a fire with the leads to the battery, extinguishing the fire is probably the least desirable outcome for disaster control. If the cable is burning, then the smoke is going to fill the cabin in seconds and choke the astronauts long before a fire itself can become the main threat.
It is better to prevent the fire through means suited to the situation.
1: Breakers to stop overcurrent situations.
2: Fuses as backup for the above.
3: Cable insulation that does not burn, or does not easily burn when it is heated.
If those do not do their job, then you are faced with a fire event in zero G. Extinguishing it is a disaster in itself. Conventional methods may not be possible due to how materials behave in freefall.
Without studying fire prevent protocols with NASA, my response to a fire would be 'SUIT UP!' and then depressurizing the cabin the moment people are sealed. No oxidizer, no fire.
8994555
I'm kindly gonna skip putting that one in writing... *shudders*
Regardless, it still seems like a logical step to be able to get at the harness and at least visually inspect it before putting any current back into the system, assuming you even power back up after that kind of a failure. Which brings me back around to my original point, I'd feel better at least being able to access the areas behind and/or underneath something that's not intended to be jettisoned at any point during the mission if I were on that crew
8994545
That is NOT a mana battery. It's an ELECTRIC battery. Probably, given the usual cringy nature of CSP tech a lead-acid one...
Yes they need a typical extension to reach down in the bottom of the "pit" to undo the bolts.
If that is the ONLY place they have those it is reasonable to forgo having that specific tool. There is nothing "strange" or at least stranger than whatever else the ponies have done in coming here... We are talking about people who at first wanted to go to space in a CARDBOARD BOX...
Too damn many batteriesAnd that's why, as much as I'd like to know how it made it into the final design, I'm not surprised it did. Hell, I still have a hard fathoming this whole story can be traced back to the premise that Twilight published a paper about something that Celestia and Luna never explicitly denied. We've definitely come a long way from the early days of CSP, that's for damned sure
8994573
In spacecraft and aircraft design, if you are doing inspections of equipment like batteries during flight, you have serious reliability problems that need to be solved back at the design phase, not during operations.
Consider that in order to accommodate your relief, the vehicle has to be designed with access to parts in mind. To do that, the vehicle's approach to how space is used has to dump something. In this case, space and weight economy are likely to be dumped so that your equipment and wiring options are accessible from the cabin interior. If you're dumping your physical economy, you're killing your spacecraft. Because space and weight are your PREMIUM commodities.
This forces your rocket to be bigger, heavier, and that rolls into the bigger engines, more fuel, bigger rocket spiral that engineers blanch at.
And keep in mind, this isn't just making the battery compartment more accessible. If you're going this route, you're going this route for the entire electrical system and attached components. A cable can burn anywhere if it's going to burn. So if you want to feel good about inspecting under the battery, you need to feel good about inspecting however many miles of electric cable you have in your module.
Spacecraft aren't really intended to be field-serviced by their crew. If the battery and wiring harness need tending, then you don't service it in space. You switch to the backup system and land ASAP, and let a full crew work on it.
Of course, six months into deep space, landing for a ground service is hard, which is why everything must be triple-redundant reliable.
That's why, in these situations, what you go for is reliability and redundancy with as thorough a knowledge of failure modes as possible. And fail SAFE design. (Fail safe not meaning something can't fail, but meaning that it if or when it fails, it does so by defaulting to safe conditions. A nuclear reactor is a prime example. In a loss of operational power for control systems, the control rods that moderate the reactor core should default to sliding into place, shutting the reactions down.)
If this mode of operation can't make you feel better, then you have trust issues that you probably won't be able to resolve, and should not go to space today.
Hey, don't beat yourself over it, buggo, everyone missed that.
... Looks like Starlight's killer dm plans were met with opposition. Plus, never try to deceive a burn deceiver.
8994555 8994573
In Twilight’s defense, I would point out that even the best and brightest here on Earth can’t micromanage every detail of a complex development program, hence we have stepwise refinement, delegation of responsibilities, and “trust, but verify.” Unfortunately, even the best and brightest can overlook things or fail (or forget) to take a fault condition into account, creating a latent flaw that doesn’t surface until certain specific conditions are met. If Twilight Sparkle personally designed and etched each and every rune and line in the Amicitas drive array, then, yes, it’s totally her fault it wound up on Mars. But if she didn’t, if there was any delegation, duplication of plans, change orders, etc., then there are that many more possibilities for the source of the error. It could have been as simple as two pages in Twilight’s notebooks getting stuck together with drool after a prolonged design session.
8994601
Forget my trust issues, I wouldn't even be going to space because my fucking glasses...
BTW, as a pilot, in the RAT I trust. A little dead-stick landing without 90% of your instruments never hurt anyone, did it?
8994617
Depends: is it a fly-by-wire aircraft with a RAT that generates enough power to drive the flight computers and the control surface actuators? With a sufficiently powerful computer, sensors, and a few control surfaces, you can keep a brick stable at Mach 20—at least until a wing folds up from overheating due to a foam pillow hitting the heat resistant leading edge at around 500 MPH and punching a hole in it a couple of weeks earlier. Insufficient power? Good luck with that, ‘cuz you have no mechanical connection to the control surfaces and insufficiently fast reaction time to keep the aircraft stable if it’s something like the Space Shuttle orbiter, a B-2, or a fighter aircraft.
8993779
And a good paladin is played like a bad person, or at least a terrible teammate, 9 out of every 10 good paladins.
And what we see here, is not the makings of a good paladin.
8994545
I would remind you that Apollo XIII was a case of literally having brought another entire, independent spacecraft with you. Now, if the same problem had occurred on Apollo VIII, it would have been a far sadder story because they wouldn’t have had any
square pegsround holes in the first place. Or power, beyond what was in the CM reentry batteries.8994628
Dude... fighter jets and airliners are two very different beasts. I'd love to explain what the RAT is, but the fact is somebody already did that a helluva lot better than I can... so I'm just gonna link his video. As for aircraft that don't have a RAT (like the 737 or 747), that would be because it's possible to control the aircraft and still receive power to your instruments and whatnot, even without starting up the APU to fill in for the engine-driven generators
EDIT: It looks like your original comment has been edited from before my reply. All I have to say is that the RAT exists for aircraft that are reliant on electricity to be able to land safely in the event of a power loss thanks to FAA regulations. Not every aircraft has a RAT, but if it doesn't then that means that a RAT isn't necessary due to the aircraft's design
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Indeed... although IIRC they had the square pegs, just not a round hole they needed to fit it into. The CM scrubbers were the square cartridges, whereas the LEM ones are round
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The RAT TL;DR—It’s an emergency wind pump/generator/mill on an airplane that trades aerodynamic drag for hydraulic or electrical power.
So, are there any airliners that use electrical—not hydraulic—actuators for the control surfaces? I’m still googling the 787, but it looks like the 777 and A320 have hydraulic actuators and still need a RAT to pressurize them.
Good thing the battery was built in like an old car, and not like a modern one, where in so many cases you have to take teh body shell off the chassis to work on engine componants etc.
As for the sonic screwdriver, thats a Rotating Phonic Field, which the best movie example I can think of, is the sequencial nuke detonations in The Core, or the phase shifted shielded pole electric motor but in high frequency sound, ultrasound, which also has the behaviour of an impact driver.
The trick Im waiting for it phase hifted interacting lasers to create rorating fields at a distance, because a tracking or sequential array of such lasers offset to one side gets you linear motion sideways. Triangulated beams ge you Tractor and Pressor behaviour.
The next level of ease of work is worth it because of the previous billion years of evolutionary effort, not because of the immediate effot to press a button instead of hunt a mammoth with a flint knife.
Concorde had a RAT with its immense analog computer, so whats the excuse with todays tiny fraction control power supposedly needed?
Concorde had a RAT with its massive computational electrical system, so how vastly smaller should be todays microprocessor based stuff?
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More like every model in the Airbus family needs a RAT. 737 features manual reversion and just generally doesn't need THAT much power to operate the control surfaces, and the 747 has windmill engines. 757, 767, 777 and 787 all have a RAT, and AFAIK the 797 still hasn't entered service. Also AFAIK the 707, 717 and 727 have all been effectively retired from service.
On the cargo side of things, I'd consider an MD-11 type rating, which also has a RAT-like device called an ADG (interestingly enough, it's located near the front of the fuselage on that aircraft - something you normally see in smaller jets like the CRJ and the Citation)
As far as that question about electrical actuators goes, I want to say it's all hydraulic. The only question would be how reliant the hydraulic system is on electricity. The A320, for example, is heavily reliant on electricity for hydraulic pressure, hence the existence of the RAT-driven Blue hydraulic line. The 737, however, would still be possible to fly... although the yoke would be a bit more difficult to manipulate