Rain fell outside the office window, smearing the lights shining from Johnston Space Center and the surrounding homes and businesses. It had been, as it happened, a very long, very busy day.
“All right,” Teddy said, slumping into his chair and leaving his briefcase on the floor beside it. “Give me a status update. First, how is Sleipnir 3 now?”
Venkat cleared his throat. The last couple days, ever since Sleipnir 1’s unexpected failure less than a minute after launch, he hadn’t felt like speaking to anyone, no matter how much he had to. “Sleipnir 3 is in a parking orbit of Earth, safe and secure,” he said. “Solar arrays deployed perfectly. Remaining fuel in the second stage is well below the amount required for the Mars injection burn. I’m waiting for an answer from SpaceX on when they can send a BFR refueler up.” His frown grew deeper as he added, “Since they shut down operations immediately after today’s launch, that could be a while.”
“Yes, about that,” Teddy muttered. Looking at Mitch, who instead of his usual slouch on the couch sat leaning forward on the cushion edge, he asked, “Any idea what caused this one?”
“It’s less mysterious than Sleipnir 1,” Mitch said. “Telemetry shows a sudden increase in the flow of oxygen from tank #2 of the first stage. The onboard computer detected it and immediately went into emergency abort mode, shutting down the main engines and decoupling from the second stage. With the second stage good to go for abort to orbit, the first stage executed a soft splashdown under power before the oxygen ran out. Recovery operations are underway. SpaceX is turning failure investigation of that over to us, since they have their hands full with the Sleipnir 1 investigation.”
“Keep me informed,” Teddy said. “How healthy is the probe itself?”
Bruce Ng, calling in from Pasadena, replied, “Both Sleipnir 2 and 3 show fully operational. Sleipnir 2 is on course with no correction needed at this time. Sleipnir 3 is in standby mode pending the Mars injection burn.”
“Good. Keep it that way.” Teddy sighed and turned to Annie. “I know the answer, but how is this playing in the press?”
“Actually better than expected,” Annie said. “Better for us, anyway. SpaceX is getting absolutely fucked in the media. The pundits are making the point that it was SpaceX systems that failed. NASA and JPL systems all worked.”
“That’s not going to be such a good thing in the short term,” Venkat muttered. “We need at least one more launch out of them to get Sleipnir 3 moving. The more pressure they feel under, the longer that’s going to take.”
“Tough shit,” Annie snapped. “They should have got it right the first time. But the only thing that splashes back on us in any way is that people are talking about the Great Galactic Ghoul again. One twit actually said on camera, ‘I guess God doesn’t want Mark Watney to have a new radio.’ Bullshit like that gets on my fucking nerves.”
Teddy nodded, brushing the point aside with his hand. “Bottom line,” he said quietly. “What does this do to Mark Watney?”
“In terms of food, no immediate change,” Venkat said. “We were shipping almost three hundred days of food for four people. So long as we get Sleipnir 3 refueled within three months or so, he’ll end up with the last two hundred sols before rescue with full food. But Sleipnir 3 needs to arrive by Sol 667 at least in case he has to travel overland to Schiaparelli and the Ares IV MAV. He’ll need extra time for travel and for any modifications to the MAV he might need to make.
“More to the point, he won’t have a reliable radio. We sent two, but we just dragged one out of the Atlantic with the Sleipnir 1 wreckage, and the other is parked in orbit until we can refuel the engine. He’s limited to Pathfinder or the Morse code key he installed on the alien ship’s radio for communications for the duration.”
Teddy pondered this information. “From here it looks like all that’s happened is that we’ve lost our redundancy,” he said. “Which is fine, because that’s why we have redundancy. But if something else goes wrong, Mark is thrown back on his own resources again.”
Venkat nodded. “That’s what it looks like from my desk too. Astromaterials is still demanding that I make Mark and his friends do something to guarantee the air seal on that cave of theirs. I suppose I’ll have to make another stab at it now.”
“Why haven’t they done something?”
“Resource priorities. The alien magic, or whatever it is, is the only effective tool they have for the job. It’s almost impossible to apply a sealant compound on the walls and ceiling inside the cave. And applying some sort of water or ice or other compound to the ground above the cave will only cause erosion and increase the danger of a breach. And they’re using their magic reserves for making new batteries and harvesting crops.” Venkat shrugged and added, “Also, their superiors back home say it’d be more dangerous to change conditions in the cave than to leave them as they are. A couple of my outside consultants agree with them.”
“Hmm.” Teddy ran a finger along his desk blotter. “That farm, and the crops Mark is growing in the Hab, represents the only safety margin he has left,” he said.
“More than that,” Venkat said. “He needs at least one more harvest to have enough food even to get to the arrival of Sleipnir 2.”
“Talk to Mark. No, wait- ask for a direct connection to the alien leaders,” Teddy said. “We need to get through to them just how vital it is that that cave be preserved. And then get with SpaceX and see how quickly we can get two more boosters up. Bruce, get your team working on Sleipnir 4. I want to get our redundancy back.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Bruce said, exhaustion in his voice.
“Moving on,” Teddy said. “It’s two months until Hermes begins aerobraking. How is the crew holding up?”
“They’re worried about their crewmate,” Mitch said flatly. “They’ve all volunteered for Ares 3B. My first pick for that crew remains Martinez, Beck and Johannsen. I’d send Lewis back out if there were room for a fourth crew member.”
“We’ve had this discussion, Mitch,” Teddy said. “Ares III has been in space almost a year. Even with simulated Mars gravity and a monitored diet, there are serious health issues. Exposing them to another year in space so soon is an unacceptable risk. We’re going with your B team.”
“They’re not as good,” Mitch said. “I chose them for backups solely because I didn’t want to bump anyone in line for Ares IV or Ares V.”
“It is what it is,” Teddy said. “I want the best available pilot, doctor, and sysop on that mission. Have you asked for volunteers?”
“Practically the whole astronaut corps volunteered,” Mitch replied. “Even the Ares IV crew. Of course they volunteered. They’re astronauts.”
“They’re astronauts,” Teddy agreed. “I want your revised Ares 3B crew and backups within the week.”
Mitch grumbled but didn’t say anything intelligible.
“One last order of business,” Teddy said. “Are there any new results from the Watney Prize entries?”
“Nothing much,” Venkat said. “About the only useful suggestion we’ve had is using the simulator MAV to speed up assembly of a lander for Ares 3B. We’re still looking into how much that might save, but it’s still not looking good. We doubt we’ll have a special MAV to send on 3B when it leaves Earth. Almost all the other suggestions are impractical at best, ludicrous at worst.”
Teddy sighed. “So, no improvement on Sol 768?” he asked.
Venkat shook his head. “Nothing at this time,” he said.
To: Starlight Glimmer (a2_19@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Rich Purnell (rpurnell01@nasa.gov)
Subject: Magical Laws – Formula Check
I am working on a project and need the following equations checked. These are derivatives of the equations from your previous reports and communications. Any clarification you could give on whether these formulas work would really help…
So, looks like the Sleipnir 3 problems were a bit of a red herring (and a very well done one too) as it can be recovered and with enough time to spare so they don't have to rush it.
And Rich really must be onto something if he's got Starlight checking his math.
We should call him Rich "Wizard" Purnell soon.
This seems completely unrelated.
Rich Purnell. First human wizard. I can't wait to see what he's cooking up!
So at least Sleipnir 3's issue wasn't a total mission failure, though it is a delay. Let's hope for a timely fix.
Woo! Go, Rich!
What do you do for a living?
Also buy some tobacco and give it to a chieftain. Safe journeys
Didn’t mean to offend by accusing ya of burning out, but 1: RL comes first, I’ve said it many times. Make sure you’re not cutting sleep maintaining a schedule that’s not possible because of things like the Con and 2: don’t assume you can’t burn yourself out. I had coworkers in the army that insisted they were fine even as they puked from exhaustion and were physically shaking. Determination is fine, over-reaching is dumb. There are also multiple types of burnout. The one I’m warning against isn’t author or muse burnout.
Hmph. Sleipnir III was a successful failure at best thanks to the incompetence of the two buffoons on that inspection crew. They're lucky it wasn't an explosion, though...
8839183
and the 1st human to make a battery
Small wonder SpaceX is getting blasted. 1/3 successful launches? This isn't the 60's. Never argue with the Mouse... he's scary. Not that those engineers currently being roasted can be expected to make decisions based on the fact the the guy they nay-sayed got an elaborate description...
Uh, Teddy? Just because they don't agree with some of your people about what to do with it doesn't mean they don't know that. Although it would be good to get a dialogue between you guys to mention 'oh hey, we got a dimension hopping probe going, how can we work together toward fine-tuning it?'
Rich Purnell and Starlight Glimmer discussing magic math... no words... should've sent a poet... but Rich Purnell is a steely eyed magic man... and I'm no music expert but I do believe that's a disco reference... sorry, Mark.
I cannot wait to see what Rich comes up with. Though, I hope NASA doesn't convince ESA/CSP to screw up the cave. I trust Maud.
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Yeah, that part felt somewhat weird. Like, I'm pretty sure the alien leadership are perfectly aware about the necessity of food for survival
Obviously a more direct line of communication between the two agencies is a good thing regardless that frankly should have been established a while ago, but the given reason seems odd :P
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Why? Nasa has a far clearer picture of the situation because they literally have pictures of the situation, a decent line of communication, a far better understanding of Mars in general and entire teams to brainstorm and compare opinions. In contrast Maud is alone and has to work with small summaries via water morse.
In any sane universe Nasa has a far better chance of getting it right. Mauds opinion should just be that, an opinion, one to be passed along to the Nasa think tank and nothing more.
One atmospher pressure is ten metres of water depth at one earth g. Rock usually averages about 2.5 the density of water, ice is 0.9 the density and sand has lots of spaces making it about 1.5? Given Mars 1/3 Earth g, you would need to snow cannon 60 foot of sand and ice mix over teh top, or dig that far down. Trouble is with depth, is that further down, the pressure pushes inwards.
Very happy to see there was a considered recovery method for the last launch, as although the manual for the Shuttle gave multiple Abort modes, apparently none were ever used because the flight envelope never remained within those ranges for long enough to occur.
Complaining about old stuff in space? The trick with space is that you use the newest and cheapest and expect it to fail with little return, but you can make a hundred of them, or you use aincient carved in stone standards and build to last centuaries.
You can do an awful lot of science with a simple bleep. As long as you have a simple bleep to be able to do lots of science with.
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I tend to agree.
If both had equal data I would trust Maud more. Cutie mark powers are insanely strong. But Maud knows nothing of the composition of the cave farm OR the risk of the rock melting.
And that's the big issue. Unless the rock stops warming up, the regolith will melt.
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The critical limitation with the Shuttle abort modes was that they had no options for aborting while the solid rocket boosters were lit. This was a function of the Air Force's massive payload and weight requirements, coupled with the Air Force's national security monopoly on titanium and the limited budget NASA was given for the Shuttle -- solid rocket boosters were the only way to achieve the demanded performance within the demanded budget without using the prohibited titanium alloys, and that included not fitting the SRBs with abort capabilities (which would have added too much weight).
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As we've seen with Sleipnir 3 though, an entire team can overlook a problem one person can spot. And while this is a bit meta, Maud has her entire life's worth of experience and cutie mark magic boosting said experience. There's a reason there are outside consultants who agree with her, because while nothing is certain Maud does have a point.
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Hence me saying her opinion should still be noted and passed on to the think tank. Her opinion is valuable but I wouldn't put it above that of NASA just because she's Maud, especially considering NASA has so many advantages over her, cutie mark or not.
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I guess he "knows enough for his questions to have risen to the level of stupid". =)
I'm kind of wondering why Starlight is prioritizing more batteries over sealing the cave.
I mean if the batteries are just storing mana generated by the people and the plants, then rate of magic storage shouldn't increase with number of batteries, only the maximum level they can store at once. Since they aren't capping out their magic storage pretty much ever, they don't need more batteries right now.
Instead she should seal up the cave to avoid catastrophic failure, and then she can worry about raising their maximum magic storage.
"from JohnstonSpaceCenter and"
"from Johnston Space Center and"?
Hah, and you actually skip the Sleipnir 3 launch. :D
Sounds like there was no boom, but not no problems, though.
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You have to wonder, if he can get Magic to work in scientific conditions... Real F'in Magic.
Whoa...
And we thought discovering fire was a big thing.
It could actually usher in a new age of discovery, right after the Industrial Revolution and the Integrated Chip revolution.
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Duel purpose, more batteries means a stronger magic field... Which means her spells are stronger and can run longer
If you ever get the chance while you're young enough, take a hike to the bottom of Canyon de Chelly to the Pueblo ruins. It's something of a spiritual thing. Just keep in mind it is about a thousand feet down a straight walled bar-ditch of effing God. ^_^
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Well the batteries as we've seen them described aren't a vacuum. Unless the magic is directed they just absorb ambient magic. Think of it less like a sink and more like capturing rain in a barrel. The rate of water storage per barrel isn't going to increase if you put down a second barrel, but at the end of the rain you still have twice as much water as you would had you only left out one.
Also, redundancies. Should one magic battery break, they'll have more spares to pick up the loss and allow for a new batch of spares to be created. Remember that they need magic to make them so once they lose all batteries they can't replace them, no matter how much raw material they have.
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The batteries are nowhere near 100% efficient at capturing ambient mana. Having more means that you have more collectors, not that you're depleting the overall mana pool. At least not till you have a bunch of them.
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I believe Kris himself said previously that using the mana batteries is like using solar power - they don't impact the ambient mana any more than solar panels deplete the sun's energy. Hence the more batteries they make sooner, the sooner they can start tackling bigger issues and have better safety margins.
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It wasn't made clear in story that they were more like collecters rather than purely storage. I assumed(from my experience in video games on the differences between regen and capacity) that they purely increased the storage amount without letting you gather faster.
8839429
If they can get it to work under controlled conditions, it would be as if God handed mankind the keys to the universe and said, "Now, get out there and play, kids."
For starters, real force fields, reactionless drives, dimensional (as in size) manipulation, teleportation, clean, non-nuclear atomic transmutation, matter manipulation, total reversible mass/energy conversion, instantaneous long-distance communication, maybe even molecular binding fields to reinforce structural strength in other materials and gravity control. Fusion power, because we no longer have to fuck around with magnetic field containment in a tokomak. Practically infinite reaction mass. The ability to scale machines, or maybe even living subjects, to to any needed size. Imagine being able to resize starship crews to the size and mass of gnats, or freeze them temporarily as silicate stone. True stasis, to save on long distance use of resources, or as a protective measure, or to save the life of an injured person. Imagine what this does when you apply it to medicine, manufacturing, mining and agriculture. We'll combine it with what we already KNOW, now. The ability to build efficient, near-perfect replacements for any missing limb or organ, or regenerate damaged body parts and tissues. Kidney failure becomes an overnight hospital stay and a followup to see if the new organ or system is working fine. Fuck cancer, cancer's our bitch now. We can flip someone's sex without surgery, or even turn them completely into something else, if they wanted. Custom bodies, true consciousness backup, true enhancement of the body and mind. Trained teams of psychonauts could walk around in a volunteer's head and actually see how a conscious mind operates from within. PTSD suddenly becomes a treatable, curable condition. We can grow food in depleted soil and restore it as we do so, desalinize water easily for drinking and agricultural use and clean polluted water. Barring political human fuckery, starvation and famines become a thing of the past. Turn CO2 and methane back into fuel or into forms that can be sequestered easily, and turn our own civilization into a net carbon sink. Soil remediation, water remediation, toxic sites can now be eliminated. True, honest-to-god deep core mining and power generation, using boreholes reinforced by magical systems that penetrate into the mantle, or by using magical systems to gather thinly-spread raw materials into one place for easy harvesting. Completely clean energy. True nanofactories. Easy weather manipulation. No more tornadoes, no more hurricanes, no more wrecked cities and dead people. Earthquake mitigation. Volcano control. Complete biosphere renewal. Orbital manufacturing. Solar system colonization and terraforming.
I can see downsides and possible problems. But the net positives far, far outweigh the negatives.
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8839235
I have this mental picture of him creating the first working human-made mana battery, only for someone else to look at it and realize it's vaguely similar to Wilhelm Reich's orgone cabinet-thingie. Then they look at things other
cranksmystics throughout history goofed around with and weird ancient artifacts, and start wondering if at least a few people throughout time managed to figure out a few ways to crudely manipulate a thaumic field and either kept it to themselves or lost it, either accidentally or on purpose.Human history then becomes this tragic story of near-misses as people found, lost, found again and finally forgot and ignored thaumaturgy because there was no systematic approach or true institutional memory and our actual knowledge of magic wound up either couched in, or buried beneath, religious dogmatism. By the time we've actually got the math and a proper systematic approach for experimentation, recording, and passing down data, we wind up muddling off in a different direction entirely which worked well enough, but also meant that we weren't pursuing thaumaturgy and believed it to be completely mythical. Meanwhile, a universe away, the Equestrians had almost the exact opposite situation.
Completely wild-assed unfounded speculation here, but maybe that's why we can't find a good theory of quantum gravity or a true unified field theory, quantum mechanics and classical mechanics don't quite line up, our newborn universe had more matter than antimatter when there should have been more or less equal amounts, and we're still trying to figure out why there seems to be more measurable mass and energy in the observable universe than we can actually see. Even if physics and our picture of the universe is more or less correct, we're missing several really huge pieces of the puzzle. And now Cherry Berry and friends just handed them to us.
Yer a wizard, Richie.
At least Sleipnir III is still intact. As long as they don't completely bollox up the refuel flight, this should go relatively well, aside from the communication issues. And speaking of communication issues, agency-to-agency communications will need a lot of work before they can go from polite boilerplate to geological discussion.
And I admit, I got a smile out of "Great Galactic Ghoul."
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Well, if this God guy doesn't want Mark to have a radio, he's just gonna have to put up with it. He's not in the chain of command. I mean, we can't all get what we want all the time.
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I think they're going to use the batteries to help with the cave. I remember Startlight saying something about the spell she would use needing more power to actually be effective. Too many gaps in the wall or something.
Please tell me nasa thought to send some small packets of seeds with the resupply missions.
8839249
Yeah, having some kind of radio beacon or something to let them know if they're in the right dimension would probably be a good idea.
Rich Purnell will make Magic -> electric battery , and the power will last forever, because battery at big city , life->magic ->endless electric
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Starlight literally can't seal the cave right now. First, she doesnt know an aplicable spell (zero-maintainence after casting, will work on unseen fissures). This issue has been relayed to Equestria and they are working on it. Second, she doesnt have the available mana for a spell that large even if she knew one. This issue is being worked on by... Starlight making more batteries.
8839930
I wonder if it would be possible to use some of the batteries to feed a better spell off of the charge that the crops are generating.
They could learn about Apollo 11's name change to "Tranquility Base" and do something similar.
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More interesting to me is that he got starlights email address somehow...
8839542
That's a little like listing evey technology in the last hundred years as if they all came immediately after the underlying discoveries of a century ago.
Discovering magic is a big deal, but it's a totally new field. Humanity is at least a thousand years behind, with absolutely nothing to go off except what the ponies give them. Not one human wizard exists, making for a scenario much like discovering physics but not yet having any physicists. Note that it takes a genius with active imput from another genius for a human to make even a limited contribution to the field.
Matching equestrias magical achievments seems at least a few decades out. Even if they actively lend a hand, whih would probably be reciprocal.
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Assuming NASA or some think tank is making contingency plans for when the rescued ponies or ESA come to Earth, I wonder if part of their planning includes the possible propagation of magic as civilization can barely handle regular humans without throwing mana arrays/batteries into the mix.
Aside from the social and economic impact of magic, another concern is how humanity or Earth's ecosystem might change due to prolonged exposure to Equestrian-level ambient magic if mana arrays/batteries became commonplace.
Possible shout-outs to Arthur C. Clark's "Childhood's End", Shadowrun goblinization, or the "X-Men" comics if scientists worry that prolonged exposure to Equestrian-level ambient magic might cause a new subspecies of mankind (or multiple subspecies much like how ponies have three subraces).
Wow. Look at all these supportive comments on here recently. Take your time, go slower for better stuff, we don't mind...
Well fuck that. Let me tell you right now, don't listen to them.
Spurn the weak willed platitudes. Harden yourself to the adversity that is being a true author. Jaden your mind to the dead slog of meeting the dreaded deadline. Never give up and say, 'I'll let it slip this one time.' Let yourself frenzy as you write your thoughts upon paper, let the pressures crush all doubt from mind and body. Inhale deeply fresh strength, new determination, and let it stoke the inventive fires deep within. Blaze brighter than you have ever before, brilliant and radiant and untouchable by mere mortals. Take the coke of your muze and shovel it upon the raging inferno as you smelt steel destined to be more beautiful than any Damascus. Let your frustration blaze shortly, white hot and intense, and then use it too as a fuel source, consumed for the work of art taking place. For you already stand out in your exception. You stand head and shoulders and chest above most the others here, though you may not see it. They mean well, but their advice will claw you down to their level, their mediocrity, and though this sounds harsh and mocking, it is not meant to be so. They simply don't understand that such advice will wear away the power of greatness. They would welcome you with open arms, but you most keep them at distance. For if they were to touch your pillar of greatness, your pyre of might, they would surly melt in the forge and taint the beautiful craft with slag.
There will be, I am sure, those who will deny my comment. They will say, 'I write as well, I know how it works,' and I will say, NAY, for they do not author. They write when the time is only good for them and damn their own dedication. They do not write even when faced with a writer's block, for they know not true authoring, and this is okay. Not all writers are great, for very few lack the willpower and ambition needed to harness starstuff and condense it to material form.
Keep writing, keep posting daily, keep the furnace and forge hot and ringing, steady and tolling out peels of greatness for all to see and read. Listen to the heart and support behind the words of your fans, but not the words, for they will drag you asunder, in the riptide that is so comforting one does not know one has been ensnared until it is too late. Crash through the surf and stand tall and assured, a beacon of power and greatness. Walk from the drawing comfort, stand upon the bleached, white hot sand. Shore your body to the rigors of being an author and show others how to stand, facing ever forwards. Let others use you to drag themselves up into a standing position, and nod at their accomplishments, but do not ever be slowed by it.
For you are a great author, Kris Overstreet, even if you deny it or can't see it. Never stop writing, never stop forging your amazing stories.
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Celestia bless you for expecting the best of humanity. The pessimist in me would expect people to actively weaponise even the most basic cantrips and then go to war with their "unstopable superweapons". It could very quickly put us right back into the height of the Cold War if not full blown WWIII.
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You're making the mistake of assuming the author hates all religion. Keep in mind that, as quite a few people in our reality and time do, the people being referenced and commented on here are the ones shoving their views down people's throats while claiming to be doing the work of their deity and trying to make changes to things to suit them based on their "moral principles" when generally speaking it's immoral to be doing it according to their own beliefs. I haven't seen a single reference made to disparage religious folk simply because they are religious; this is not an attack on you, me, or anyone's beliefs, but a commentary on the realistic responses from the kind of religious folk that stick their noses where they don't belong and try to run the show using the weight of religion as their cause, platform, and evidence, with no real reason for being invested in the first place and certainly without any evidence aside from their religion to prove why something should or should not be the case, which also has the added side effect of ruining the good name of religious folks that are actually decent people. People like this who also happen to be religious make a mockery of science and other religious folks when they try to run the show without accepting the rules of science, and generally like to throw wrenches into any attempt by scientists to better our quality of living (why else would they so heartily refuse the concept of birth control, for instance, despite not enforcing the fact that a woman shouldn't be allowed to cut her hair according to the bible)?
I come from a Christian family. I don't know or really care what faith you're from, but this isn't an attack on religious peoples. If this is the closest you've ever come in terms of quote unquote "discrimination" against religious folks, you're lucky, as real discrimination makes the mentions in this story sound like a compliment to those few extremists it mentions (believe me, my family has had it worse thanks to people like the kind mentioned in Maretian); and also a bit naive.
8840703
If Alton Brown is still around and alive in this continuity, they need to drag his ass out of retirement, give him a team, put them in a simulated hab and tell him, "This is what they have to work with, these are the conditions they're working under, and they have this much time and energy. What can they do to make a diet consisting largely of potatoes and alfalfa into something that won't drive them utterly insane?" And then let him science the shit out of it.
And if someone on the Equestrian side gets the bright idea to enlist the aid of Zesty Gourmand to do the same thing, fire them. Out of a cannon. Into the sun.
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More like a pink herring. We correctly identified a Chekhov's Gun; we just didn't figure a bigger gun would be sprung on us.
God is most displeased with this. He's currently steepling his paw and eagle talons and frowning as he ponders various creative disasters to fling at them.
"ORLY?" asked Teddy.
fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/155/a/e/south_park___team_craig_by_flip_reaper_z-d67rm89.png
"We're doomed," Teddy face-palmed.