Ad Astra
The news quieted down before too long. None of the nations performed any publicity stunts or launches. At best, word got out of an engine test here or the completion of some important part there; for the most part, though, everypony just waited to see who would finish first.
Opposition to Equestria’s continuation of their space program settled down after Rainbow Dash went on record (against the advice of Twilight) for obscenely calling out the protestors for putting their heads in the wrong places and that she wouldn’t hesitate to step up and be a pilot again.
Almost a month-and-a-half later, Pinkie Pie got a short letter from Rutherford, requesting her presence in Yakyakistan. She and her friends all knew what it meant: The yaks were actually going to launch first. A team of calculators had been assigned to help the yaks out, but beyond hypothetical scenarios and the specifications of the rocket, they weren’t any more privy to when the yaks were going to launch than anypony else. It hadn’t been too much of a surprise, though; they had to acknowledge that Yakyakistan had industrialized in an alarmingly short span of time.
When Pinkie arrived in Rutherford’s home village, she found herself in the middle of the largest yak celebration she’d seen. Hundreds of yaks wandered through the village and thousands more had set up camp around it. Everything had been decorated with a mix of Yakyakistan colors and space-themed everything. She could make out at least one source of music somewhere out of sight and the smell of warm yak-pastries filled the air.
On her way to Rutherford’s building, Pinkie Pie passed a field of yak children playing with stomp rockets; one yak strapped themselves to a rocket and their friends stomped on a pad as hard as they could to see how far they could launch the “space-yak”. It looked like a lot of fun, but she knew there would be an ample supply of excitement to come.
Rutherford was in the best mood Pinkie had ever seen him in. All of the yaks were, really.
“I solve tension with Grumpy yaks,” he explained. “Grumpy yaks that were upset yaks might forget old ways. I get best idea I had in while. I tell grumpy yaks that yaks have big festival on day of launch. I let grumpy yaks help all yaks celebrate old ways at same time we make new ways. There a lot of stomping. Yaks even make music that make yaks think of space. All yaks happiest I seen. Today very big for yak history.”
Pinkie ruffled the hair on his head. “See? I knew you were a good leader.”
Rutherford shook her off, but he couldn’t hide his smile. “Anyway, there still lot of work to do for launch. Yaks try to launch in couple hours when everything ready.”
This time, Pinkie found out, they would be watching from Rutherford’s village. Supposedly, the launch would be grand enough to see from several mountains away, but Pinkie really didn’t see how they could be so sure.
“Three!”
Thanks to their limited cooperation with Equestria, the yaks also had wireless communication crystals and loudspeakers.
“Two!”
Not that they needed those for a countdown. Pinkie Pie estimated that there were some ten thousand yaks counting in unison.
“One!”
Pinkie suddenly figured out why “several mountains away” was, arguably, still a little too close for comfort. What must have been the explosion from the yaks’ new fuel flashed brighter than the sun, casting the entire village in the eclipse-like shadow of the mountains.
This time, Pinkie expected the shockwave, though she hadn’t decided whether trading off the rush of adrenaline for several seconds of unconsciously tensing every muscle she could in preparation was worth it. In the meantime, the yak-rocket shot above the mountains, closely followed by plasma still dispersing from the explosion and at least a dozen house-sized boulders. Fortunately, the boulders’ arc stayed a lot lower than the rocket’s, and they disappeared from sight after a peek over the mountains.
Then there was another blinding flash, for which Pinkie was thankful for the sunglasses that had been so widely passed out during the festival. That would have been the rocket’s second detonation, of which there would be many more as it ascended. For the next dozen or so seconds, the yak-rocket periodically exploded, with its lower half bouncing up rapidly in response to each explosion before re-extending away, kind of like an exploding pogo stick.
Then the sound of the first explosion reached her. Even around the mountain, the sharp crack of it bespoke violence of a scale that Pinkie could scarcely imagine. It felt as though all of Gaia started to rumble in response. Pinkie was no stranger to excitement, but, as the sounds of the subsequent explosions caught up, she couldn’t deny that the idea of hiding in a dark corner somewhere tempted her. Every hair on her body started to stick up as she tried bottling up her feeling of unease.
On the other hoof, what the yaks had just accomplished was amazing and she wouldn’t miss it for the world even if she had known what to expect.
Eventually it subsided into a tolerable, dull roar. Pinkie Pie wondered how it could still shake the ground so much before she realized that thousands of yaks were still cheering and stomping.
Pinkie made her way inside Mission Control and sat down next to Rutherford while they all monitored the data coming in from their tracking stations. Once the yak-rocket had started drifting to its orbit altitude, Rutherford took a moment to warn her that going to the moon, as they’d found out from their last attempt and the pony calculators had confirmed, would take a while.
“A while” as in days.
Pinkie wasn’t sure what would get to her first: the excitement of making history lasting several days, or the tedium of taking so long to make history.
The crowd cheered and stomped again when the Mission Control announced that the yak-rocket had achieved a stable orbit and would soon be initiating its transfer to a lunar orbit.
Soon after, Mission Control announced that the transfer had been initiated and everything looked good.
The festival continued the entire time, which gave Pinkie something to distract herself with during the long spans of time between mission activity. Not that she could do much when something was happening. Most of that time passed in a blur, possibly induced by the quantity of yak sweets she consumed while partying.
That is, until one fateful moment. The space-yak landed on the moon, by then under the scrutiny of the UMMR and EQSA, without incident. The space-yak took some pictures, packed up a few moon rocks, verified that they did not, in fact, taste anything like cheese, stomped around a bit, and prepared to return to Gaia.
That’s when the yaks hit a snag.
The next words that Twilight would hear from Pinkie Pie were, “Horseshoe Bay, we’ve had just a teensy bit of a problem here.”
EQSA scrambled to finish its own preparations in time to mount a rescue mission. The space-yak had verified that too much fuel had been consumed during landing for the upper stages to return to Gaia. At best, she could make it back into a lunar orbit.
By Pinkie’s account, the situation was dire: There were only enough snacks left on board to last for 3 days.
Naturally, Twilight took this both less and more seriously than Pinkie, taking the stance that snacks weren’t that critical, but being stuck in space was no joke. Equestria’s spaceplane was currently the only other space-faring vehicle known to be complete, or at least nearly so.
The mood of Equestrians across the nation most closely resembled “collective eye-rolling” as word got out that the Equestria’s attempt to go to the moon would be replaced by a rescue mission for the yaks. Nonetheless, it would still be a matter of pride for the mission to go off without a hitch.
While their own planned launch had been just around the corner, they had to make modifications to the plan and spaceplane to make it possible to attach it to the yak’s capsule. Twilight also called for a real-time communication link to be set up between Horseshoe Bay and Yakyakistan, to facilitate the cooperation that would be necessary for a rendezvous.
One-and-a-half days after Yakyakistan had urgently contacted Equestria for assistance, the Chroma rolled out onto the runway, once again capturing the eyes of the nation.
The Chroma’s engines fired up in their low-altitude mode and the spaceplane raced across the runway, tearing through the air with a dreadful roar, and lifted off with ludicrous speed.
Crystal projectors across the nation soon switched to the views that nearby observational airships had to offer, as the Chroma drew closer and closer to the point of switching to its high-altitude mode. Everypony at Mission Control held their breath as the spacecraft approached supersonic speeds, the point at which the Philomena had broken up previously. The tension broke as the Chroma passed the threshold; ponies everywhere watched in amazement as the Chroma’s engines each caused their own sonic rainboom and started to leave a prismatic trail in their wake.
The Chroma switched engine modes after about another minute and the prismatic trails faded out as it approached the edge of space. Twilight explained to anypony who would listen that this had to do with the lack of an atmosphere for the pegasus magic used in the engines to refract through, though at that point only Mission Control had any visual on the spacecraft, and even that wouldn’t work after the spaceplane left orbit.
The Chroma achieved an orbital trajectory shortly thereafter. In order to reach – and then retrieve – the space-yak within the next thirty-six hours, it burned its engines far longer than the mission to the moon had originally called for; between limited mana reserves and the time crunch, there wouldn’t be any way to work in a moon landing.
On the other hoof, securly attaching the Chroma to the yak capsule required one of crew to perform the first orbital spacewalk.
Twilight ordered her team to take a break as the Chroma began its 16-hour drift to the moon. As restless as everyone involved was, pony or otherwise, there just wasn’t anything they could do but wait.
Rutherford had tried to hide any embarrassment from letting Pinkie persuade him into asking the ponies for help so quickly, but she could tell that it was there. Pinkie didn’t have much luck reassuring him that the stakes were high enough that not even a yak would think twice about it, at least, not until the Chroma had rendezvoused with the yak-rocket.
Pinkie Pie got to listen in on the conversation between Horseshoe Bay, Spitfire (who performed the spacewalk) and the space-yak, who would also be performing a spacewalk to assist. Everything had started off fine, but Spitfire reported difficulty in lining up the temporary struts, because they sometimes got a bit stuck on surfaces she had accidentally brushed them against. The space-yak had better luck holding the struts in place, to the extent that she didn’t have to hold them in place after setting them. Spitfire even reported that the struts appeared to be, to her bewilderment, firmly attached before she had even bolted them down.
Rutherford cheered up a bit when a pony admitted that yaks put things together hard enough that bolts became “a precautionary measure”.
Spitfire cut the struts off after the transfer, seeing as the Chroma couldn’t possibly reenter Gaia’s atmosphere while still attached to the yak-rocket capsule. The capsule still had plenty enough fuel to deorbit after the Chroma had performed the transfer and capture burns entirely. The space-yak offered fresh-baked cookies from her last batch of dough before the two spacecraft parted ways to land in their respective nations. As the Chroma waited to come around to perform its deorbit burn, Spitfire and Blaze teased Soarin' – the unfortunate soul who was CAPCOM at the time – by describing their warm fluffy texture with the perfect amount of vanilla extract as they ate.
Pinkie could feel Twilight’s disapproval all the way from Yakyakistan. On the other hoof, fresh-baked cookies were really tasty, so Pinkie thought cookie ovens should always be involved in long spaceflights.
By the end of the hour, both spacecraft and their crew had been safely recovered. Only the yaks had moon rocks, though, a fact which did not slip by Twilight. Considering access to the first moon rocks and the potential economical advantages to more fully integrating the yaks’ technologies – after refining them, of course – and resources, Twilight decided to trade in the favor Equestria had surely gained by rescuing their yak and still officially recognizing that yaks were the first to the moon. She formally proposed that the Yakyakistan and Equestrian space programs merge together.
Having explored space first, as he set out to do, Rutherford declared that Yakyakistan would be happy to work with its pony friends in the future.
Two weeks after Equestria successfully recovered the space-yak from lunar orbit, the Labyrinthines launched their mission to the moon. The UMMR’s Titan – which dwarfed any other spacecraft – took a crew of four Labyrinthines to the moon. Parting with their usual secrecy, the UMMR released recordings of the behemoth rocket’s launch and dozens of photos taken on the moon.
Featured among them in the released packet, a picture that showed one Labyrinthine standing beside a flag they had planted, with the Titan lander in the background. Along with this, the Labyrinthines included a statement for the other nations, informing them that the UMMR claimed the moon as its own territory.
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(Optional Epilogue. Read the story first.)
Makes sense to me. (Note: link is to extremely necessary context)
Ohh! This reminds me of that Random Card Rocket Yaks thing!
Also by you, IIRC! Continuations are cool!
That was god damn brilliant. Hilarious, terrifying, and fascinating all at once, and the visual spectacle is superbly written. Yaks best at space. XD
Mmm.
This was great!
So, the Space-Yak is named Blaze? Fitting!
----
Typos:
Pinkie persuade from into [?]
Sorain
9933125
Typos fixed, and: https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Blaze
(And then I edited this comment because I can't spell "typo".)
Lousy minotaurs!
Great writing filled with a lot of exciting and evocative imagery. I find myself wishing that there was a stronger closer of some kind that would wrap your thematics up a little more tightly (neither the canon nor the optional epilogue quite did it for me) but I very much enjoyed myself nonetheless.
9933269
I am aware of my bad habit of having rather open-ended endings. To be fair, this is hardly the end of their space-based shenanigans… just the part that I cover with the given prompt.
We should have done that in 1969. There'd be half a dozen countries and coalitions with permanent moon bases by now, I'm sure.
Errol the Dragon got into space first?
A smashing story.
Magnificent stuff. The epilogue settles one of the larger gaps in all of this: The absence of Luna. It's her moon they're aiming for, after all. Getting some kind of input from her regarding the space race would've been nice.
Still, a fantastic tale of the yaks' Great Leap Upward. Thank you for a great read, and best of luck in the judging.
I really really enjoyed that. UGH I'm bad at reviews it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
I would have like to have seen some more details in a lot of places. In fact I kind of want to fanfic RD's crash and the space rescue myself.
Anyway, that was sweet and exciting and educational and... yeah. Good.
9934721
I had just a bit of a time crunch, given how things went for me IRL. I did have the potential for side-stories in mind; there are definitely opportunities for them and the like to flesh things out more, and the accident is one such place I had in mind specifically.
9934728
I know a lot about time crunches and contests, yeah. I posted mine on Friday but I had to cut tons of planned material and the epilogue to get it in under 15K.
Anyway, just let me follow you then. 
What a charming story! This felt exactly like what the MLP equivalent of the space race would be: a whimsical, fun-fueled re-imagining of historical events with just enough tension and stakes to not turn the whole thing into a joke. I also really appreciated the little character moments between Pinkie and Rutherford. That tied it all together really nicely.
As others have pointed it, it does feel rushed in places. This is mitigated somewhat by the narrative device of using newspapers and other media to relay the information in much the same way the nation at large would've received it, but I still wanted a bit more details in some places. And the ending was a bit lukewarm in terms of finality, but that hardly even factors into my enjoyment of it.
This was a fantastic ride that I'm glad I could experience. Thanks for writing it!
"In hindsight, naming our first space plane after a bird known for spontaneously dying was probably a bad omen." – Twilight Sparkle
This is the best story I have read in a long while. Thank you!
Like watching The Right Stuff all over again.
Yaks are so very Best, and it makes me really happy to see stories like this demonstrating that
The ending did feel a little underwhelming, as others have said, but this was a damn good ride. I was impressed by how tense it got close to the end, given how compact a story it was.
Luna is going to KILL them.
9932977
.....Add it.
9970085
Well, I sort of did? My helpers and I agreed that, given the structure of the story as written for the contest, it didn't fit in the actual story pages. A lot of things didn't, given that I had to get this out in time for the contest. Until I update this or make a side-story or something that conflicts with it, though, the "optional" epilogue is basically what happens next.
9970316
.....How long until you plan a Sequel?
9972412
See, it feels right to me because it feels like they've probably missed a lot of otherwise reasonable tech advances because they've been relying on magic in those areas. Why would ponies bother researching mechanical phones when they have magic?
Also, I assume Smart Yaks have a long and storied history passed down around the water cooler of "Blatantly Stealing But Convincing Prince(ss) <Whoever> That We Made It Better With Yakitude So It's Fine."
9970316
Idea for a sequel. The DRAGON Space Program.
9933640
It also raises an important point :
Yaks were not first to moon. Luna was first to moon. Teleportation and/or magical dis-corporation being the methods used doesn't change the achievement!
That said it's totally a technicality. Which means some bureaucrat somewhere should use it to get promoted.
10064979
That point (mostly) had been raised early in the first chapter by Pinkie Pie:
I don't think the yaks know much about this, at least not until Yona teaches yaks the History of Weaponized Friendship that she learned in Twilight's school. (I'm honestly not entirely sure whether that school exists yet in this story.) The yaks would still discount the notion that the ponies have been to the moon already anyway – why would they be trying to reach it for the first time again? – until tangible evidence shows up.
Regardless, in true political fashion, if Equestria claimed credit for that, it would spark bickering between the nations over where the goalposts "really" are, with each of them fighting for a slanted definition. To be honest, though, that's going to happen anyway. Throughout that process, there would most assuredly be bureaucrats vying for anything that resembles a promotion.
10066626
And so the wisdom of Hermes Conrad and co lives on!
10264365
AH HAH
They had an oven in their rocket? XD
10265919
I read about NASA doing this while I was writing the story.
on what grounds have they clamed that? The Yaks were there first!
10453079
Absent any signs or flags saying that, the Labyrinthines could – and evidently would – argue that it was yet unclaimed. In the end, claiming the moon would not be a popular move on the part of the UMMR.
10453148
they likely will not be able to make it back either