Equestrian Aerospace had completed their first ever moon landing, now they needed a reusable way to go to space. The Aeris 4A from C7 and Planetshine's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts was a great example of a reusable way, but there was no way to carry any cargo and reentry heating was a huge problem to it. The aerospike engine was also a little bit of a problem, as it doesn't have that much thrust and it was pretty heavy.

The answer for this was a shuttle that would launch from the launchpad, and once it gets back from space, it would land on the runway just like the Aeris 4A instead of using parachutes to land. The shuttle's design was a little different than the rockets, as the shuttle itself would be a separate craft than the boosters.

'Planetshine,' Derpy called out, ' Where are the snacks?'

'Kitchen, bottom cupboard on the left,' Planetshine replied, 'How did you forget, I told you that an hour ago.'

Derpy was a pony that really forgot things and acted like just like what his name implied, derpy. Planetshine even had to remind her that the space shuttle launch would be today afternoon, and the two ponies would be flying it. Derpy had basically no training in flying a rocket or aircraft, she was an engineer. She was strangely good at fixing things, packing parachutes, and unpacking and packing cargo, just like a cargo specialist.

The launch was scheduled to be in 2 hours time, and the administration was hoping that the shuttle would work, so was the ponies in mission control. The space shuttle was a new experimental spacecraft, never been flown before, and even though hopes of it succeeding was high, it was never guaranteed.

After Planetshine and Derpy finished preparing for the space shuttle launch, Planetshine and Derpy put on orange high altitude flight suits, which would protect them just in case there was a sudden cabin depressurisation, which would be disastrous without them. The cockpit they would be in was not entirely made for space travel, so depressurisation could occur at any time.

The next thing was for the two ponies to get on the space shuttle, which was held slightly above the ground using only 3 launch stability enhancers, or launch clamps. This made the two ponies ponder how such a heavy craft was able to be held with only 3 lanch clamps, as something like that looked like it would a physics-defying example at its finest.

Planetshine and Derpy climbed up the ladder which led them to the door of the shuttle. In the cockpit, there were three seats, and since there were only two ponies in the shuttle, the third one was pretty much useless. It was like a fully furnished place, complete with a mountain of snacks, food, and water in a compartment on the side of Planetshine's seat. The cockpit was also extremely spacious, looking like it would fit more than 5 ponies with absolutely no problems at all.

The shuttle was going to launch in 5 minutes. Planetshine was checking the equipment while Derpy was just being herself, ignoring basically everything related to safety. Once the 5 minutes was up, the rocket engines were ignited. The main boosters were on the shuttle itself. It was just three Vector engine which was attached to the back of the shuttle and 4 SRBs to accompany it for extra thrust for a low price. There were also some other things on the shuttle itself such as a turbofan engine mounted on the back of the shuttle which carried a bit of extra fuel so that there was room for mistakes.

Then, the clamps were released, sending the shuttle up in the air. The shuttle took off a bit slow, but that was sort of expected as it was carrying about 15t of cargo in the mk3 cargo bay. Once the shuttle was in the air, Planetshine initiated a gravity turn quite quickly to build up some horizontal speed, as it would be more efficient to do it that way. She then started to relax when the shuttle started to slowly do the turn itself.

The shuttle's gravity turn meant that the actual shuttle would be upside down, which was something that Planetshine and Derpy would have to endure as it felt like that the blood from their bodies all went to their heads, which was very uncomfortable. Once the solid boosters were done, Planetshine decoupled them. Something thoughtful that the engineers who designed it was the use of Sepratrons, little canisters filled with solid fuel to separate things while decoupling.

Once Planetshine finished with decoupling the boosters, she let the shuttle just point towards the prograde vector, waiting for its apoapsis to reach above the Karman line. Once it reached about 10000m above the Karman line, Planetshine decoupled the fuel tank and let the shuttle coast along the atmosphere until it reached space.

Once it finally got outside the atmosphere, Planetshine started to do the circularisation burn. The circluarisation burn was only about 100m/s instead of the normal 500m/s as she did a very aggressive gravity turn and was traveling mostly horizontal than vertical. Derpy was just looking out the window, staring at Equestria when they were orbiting around it.

'Derpy, can you deploy the cargo?' Planetshine asked.

'Ok,' she replied, 'Which button?'

'Not button, EVA and manually decouple the cargo.'

'Ok, hold on.'

Derpy put on her spacesuit but struggling a little bit as she didn't have the best hand-eye coordination. Once she finally put on the spacesuit, she was ready to go outside and separate the cargo from the shuttle. She opened up the airlock, depressurised it, and opened up the door to go outside. 'Planetshine, open the cargo doors,' she said.

Planetshine opened up the cargo doors, and Derpy, having bad coordination, wasn't the best at using a jetpack so she went flying away in the wrong direction. Once she finally got back to the shuttle after several attempts and failures, she was ready to separate the cargo from the shuttle.

All Derpy had to do was to flick the switch on the Clamp-O-Tron Sr docking port, which also worked pretty well as a decoupler, though not as good as a real decoupler such as the TD series of decouplers. Derpy then flew over to the cargo bay, and forgetting to cling onto it, she bounced away, flying away from the shuttle. She had to fly back, so she used a lot of her jetpack fuel to do so.

Once she finally managed to cling onto the shuttle and then she flicked the switch. The cargo decoupled flawlessly and just bouncing off the back of the cargo bay and slightly bouncing off the bottom, drifting out very slowly. The switch that Derpy flicked turned off the docking port, meaning that the cargo wouldn't dock with the shuttle.

The cargo had a cupola module, a science lab for research in space, a few batteries, a little communication dish, and RCS as a cherry on top for moving it around in space. Derpy was now in control of the cargo, using a little utility that could allow her to control it from anywhere, that is if there is a signal to the cargo. The utility was more of a gizmo, in fact, it was called the GRD, the Gizmo for Rendezvous and Docking.

She was very good at using it, controlling it flawlessly without any problems at all. No other pony could do it as well as Derpy, it was like she knew how to do it by instinct, something that nopony expected a former mailpony would be able to do. Once she guided it out of the shuttle's cargo bay, she jetpacked over to the shuttle door, this time succeeding on the first try.

She quickly went in and opened up the airlock without even closing the door, but Planetshine was prepared for such an event, and quickly closed the outside door remotely from her huge control panel. She was a bit disappointed at Derpy, but wasn't too disappointed as she sort of expected it.

Once they were finally done with deploying the cargo, they were ready to get back down, but the only problem is waiting a while until the space center was in the optimal spot for it. Planetshine grabbed the mountain of snacks that was stowed away and started to chow down on them. Derpy instead grabbed a carrot and started munching on it, like she sometimes does.

Once they finished eating, the space center was at the optimal place for a landing on the runway, so Planetshine turned the shuttle retrograde and started burning using the rocket engines. The burn only took a few seconds with the engines on low throttle. Now they just had to wait.

The shuttle entered the atmosphere, and Planetshine pitched up the nose of the shuttle to about 40 degrees, and maintained it that way until they entered the thicker parts of the atmosphere. The shuttle started to glow under the intense reentry heat, but the heat-resistant shielding built into it kept the ponies safe with absolutely no problems with overheating.

The shuttle also produced a lot of drag, which was very good for slowing down in the atmosphere, but too much means that it could miss the target that it was aiming for. Planetshine quickly realised something after entering and slowing down, and it was that the shuttle would undershoot. Planetshine did fully calculate the re-entry but forgot about the rotation of the planet, so they would have to use up some of their remainder fuel to get there.

Once they were slow enough and were in the thicker parts of the atmosphere, Planetshine initiated the turbofan engine, which wasn't that powerful, but it was very efficient as it was an air-breathing engine opposed to a rocket engine. To actually use the turbofan engine, the shuttle had to have air intakes which were placed just in front of the wings. The wings of the shuttle also acted as a fuel tank.

She then flew all the way to the space center, which wasn't very far, but she had to do some turns mid-air because she didn't align the shuttle perfectly with the runway. Once she finally got to the runway, she had to touch down, which was one of the hardest parts of landing a shuttle. The shuttle was heavy and the center of mass when all the wet mass was drained was a little too much to the back to be very stable.

Planetshine just had to do her best and landed it with a surprisingly gentle touchdown. She then deployed the drogue chute and the brakes, slowing down to a stop eventually. She then flew out of the shuttle with Derpy, leaving the shuttle to be recovered. Every pony from the space center greeted the two ponies, the other astronauts greeting them first.

Planetshine and Derpy then went to the astronaut complex to tell the others about the mission, but then Gene came in and interrupted, 'There are going to be more missions that we have planned for you two ponies.'

Author's Note

The shuttle has no monopropellant, but instead, some rocket fuel stashed in the cargo bay.