///LOCATION - NLTT-512-3A/ON APPROACH///TIME - 14:57 LMT///DATE - 14-05-2232///

Daydreaming was something that Eric loved to do. He liked to imagine what the universe looked like, eventhough he had a ship that would normally be capable of exploring said universe. Not that it was able to do anything like that in its current state, ofcourse. Thinking about the condition of his vessel, he was not exactly looking forward to re-entry, and he had every reason not to.

'Re-entry' is a space-flight procedure where an object enters the atmosphere of a planet from space. This is usually done at extremely high speeds, at which a spacecraft would normally orbit the planet. Vessels that perform a re-entry procedure undergo extreme aerodynamic drag, resulting in an immense amount of heat. If this heat is not deflected, or if the vessel does not have proper heat-shielding covering the required surfaces, the vessel will catch fire or melt. The drag can also cause the vessel to be ripped apart.

The most well-known occurence of an accidental re-entry was the disaster of Piscaro Orbital, a Coriolis-Class station that used to orbit NLTT-023-2C. After a massive fire in the engine-bay, the retro-grade thrusters were accidently ignited, which caused the station to lose speed and approach the planets atmosphere. Olympus services were quick to evacuate all of the 1.433.968 citizens from the station to other stations. Just 2 hours after the last ship departed, the station's habitation-rings started to catch the atmosphere. The drag upon them caused the station to flip, resulting in multiple structural failures in the arms supporting the rings. The station was subsequently ripped apart due to a combination of intense heat and strong aerodynamic drag. After that, the debris of what was left of Piscaro Orbital crashed into the planet's largest ocean.

After the long transfer, Eric was finally nearing 13th May. After reading trough his data and checking his systems one more time, he confirmed the maneauvre to slow his craft down enough so that he wouldn't just zip past the planet. This was normally a delicate procedure, because you would need to look out for other orbiting spacecrafts, but since he knew that there was little to no chance of any ship being in orbit around the planet, he didn't really care. He would have actually been glad to have a close encounter with another human.

After the ship had burned enough fuel to slow down to orbital speeds, and after some subsequently heavy vibrations due to inbalanced thrust, Eric was finally close to a planet again. He just had to set up the final maneauvre: the re-entry. His ship, the H2215EX Divertia, was never designed for atmospheric flight, let alone re-entry. He would have to improvise if he wanted to survive this ordeal. Eric thought of two ways to put his ship and himself on the ground in mostly one piece:

Option 1: He could use the RCS-thrusters to slow down just enough so that his orbit intersected with the atmosphere. He would then head into the atmosphere head-first, and he would use his ship's RCS to maintain a correct heading, whilst using the ship's relatively aerodynamic shape to slow his descend and glide towards the planned target. If he was going to miss the landing zone, he would be able to correct his descend enough to probably still land on the desired location. Exactly how he was going to descelerate enough to come to a safe landing was something he was not yet completely sure of.

Option 2: He could use his main thrusters to slow down as much as possible, to make sure that the effects of re-entry would be minimalized. He would then continue his descend with his tail down, continually using his main engines to slow down. Once he was close enough to the ground, he could try to almost come to a complete stop, after which he would touch down on the ground on his back. He didn't know if his ship would be able to stand up on it's rear, but if it didn't, the worst that could happen was his ship ending up slightly more damaged then it already was.

He had to choose one of these options, and he had to do it fast, as the atmosphere in his ship was slowly starting to reach toxic levels. After much consideration, he decided that the best course of action would most likely be the first plan, as the atmosphere seemed dense enough for his ship to glide to atleast a certain degree, and he believed that the heat-shielding would be sufficient enough to make sure that he wouldn't be fried inside his cockpit.

Reading his scanners, he tried locating the best place to put his vessel on the ground. He noticed a reasonably large field on the eastern side of the largest continent, big enough to give him a fair bit of space. The ground seemed to be somewhat muddy, which was a good thing, because it would allow him to slide across the ground whilst still slowing down. He entered the coordinates into his computer, which would atleast be able to show him where to go. His ship was never designed for landing on a planet, but the flight computer that was mounted in his ship was of a class commonly used in atmospheric landers. It wasn't going to land him automatically, but it would atleast provide some form of guidance.

///LOCATION - NLTT-512-3A/LOW ORBIT///TIME - 16:23 LMT///DATE - 14-05-2232///

In preperation for the procedure, Eric reprogrammed and dumped another drone, but this time the message included the coordinates where he was going to land if everything went well. IF everything went well. He still wasn't sure if he was going to be able to pull it off. He gathered all the hope he could find, and focused on the task at hand: Get on the ground.

After the flight computer calculated an estimate approach-plan, the RCS-thrusters went online, and Eric stopped being too scared, he confirmed his plan to the computer. The forward-facing RCS-thrusters fired, shooting monopropellant out of the nozzles. Very carefully, Eric watched his periapsis drop into the red-zone: the altitude at which the orbit is unstable, because it intersects with the atmosphere. Slowly but surely, his altitude started to decrease.

"This is it!" Eric thougth, reasonably confident that he would be able to do it. "Here we go!"

Suddenly, the spaceship started to shake. Lightly at first, but steadily increasing in strenght. The hull-mounted thermometers confirmed Eric's suspicion; He had entered the atmosphere. If he wanted to survive ren-entry, he would have to keep the nose of the ship at a slight upwards angle to minimize drag, whilst still retaining control. If he didn't point the nose high enough, the ship would dip down and spin out of control. If the nose were to go to high, drag would increase massively, resulting in an overheat or structural breakup.

For a few minutes, Eric continued to fall out of space, burning trough the sky like a shooting star. He left a trail of fire atleast a mile long, clearing trough the upper cloud-layer. His speed continued to drop, until he was slowed down to the point where the air-friction was not high enough to create a blazing trail. The ship's thermometers indicated that the heat was slowly dissapating, and that there was minimal heat-damage inside the craft. Eric didn't agree with his systems though.

"Damn, now that was hot!" he yelled to nobody in particular. "It's like a freaking sauna in here!"

During his descend trough the upper cloud-layer, the ship had drifted off-course a fair bit due to a jetstream, but Eric was quick to notice this. He used his RCS-thrusters to bank his vessel to the left ever so little, just enough to correct his heading. Eric was roughly 5 kilometers above the ground when he got a first glimpse of his landing site. He was still 43 kilometers away from the fields, when he received a warning from the ship's FMS (Fuel Management System):

[MONOPROPELLANT LEVEL LOW]

Eric had to land, and he had to do it fast, if he wanted to walk away from the landing. He had to save his monopropellant for the final stages of the landing, where fine-tuning is required. Looking at the status of his 3 primary thrusters, he noticed that the engine that was offline was the top engine, while the lower 2 engines were still functioning. Realising this, he quickly thought of a new plan:

His plan was to use the remaining monopropellant to aim for the fields, and then glide for the final part. When he was almost on the ground, he would fire his thrusters at their maximum. This would increase his speed on touchdown, but it would also point his nose up before touching the ground due to the center of thrust being below the center of mass. The result would be a softer landing, but with a longer landing-distance.

In order for his plan to succeed, Eric had to turn of his flight-assist, as it would prevent the thrusters from firing too much to prevent inbalanced thrust. After overiding the flight-assist, he returned his focus to the controls and his heads-up display. He was now just a minute away from reaching the ground, and all he had to do was time the ignition of his main thrusters correctly. A second too soon, and the ship would flip, resulting in an upside-down and backwards landing, which would most likely be fatal. A second too late, and he would hit the ground with the front-edge of his ship's nose, which would be quite dangerous at almost 350 kilometers per hour.

"Come on, come on, almost..." he thought, focusing on his altimeter. When it reached 8 meters, he slammed the throttle all the way forward. "NOW!"

With an ear-deafening roar, the engines kicked into action. Massive flames bursted out of the rear of the craft, incinerating anything behind it for many meters. Just seconds after the engines were turned on, the ship's bottom hit the ground, instantly destroying the RCS-thruster that were located there. The main engines instantly cut off as the fuel pipes were destroyed on impact.

Slowly but surely, the spacecraft descelerated. It began to stop, though it had already travelled atleast 2 kilometers across the field. Eventually, after what seemed like an hour to Eric, the ship finally stopped with it's nose half a meter into the ground. Everything went perfect. Atleast, almost perfect. The ship was still mostly in one piece. He hadn't caused a forrestfire. But Eric himself wasn't doing too good.

The inside of the canopy was covered in blood. Eric's left leg was twisted in an unnatural way, and he was bleeding out of his mouth.

The worst thing though, was the metal bar that had pierced his heart.

Author's Note

Please keep in mind that this is my first time writing a story. Because of this, the reading experience might differ from stories written by more skilled writers. Names, locations, ships, technologies and events are inspired by various sources, including: Games - Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen | TV - MLP:FiM, The Expanse

If you want your character to be featured as a human soldier, pilot, politician or civilian, or a pony civilian, politician or royal guard, please send me a message with the character's name, looks, characteristics, and role if you have any preference. All featured characters will be credited.