Equestrian Aerospace

Gene walked into the astronaut complex, trying to locate the young six. Once he finally found them he said to them, 'You six are going to go into space tomorrow, you guys will be living on the space station assembled a few months ago for 6 months.'

'Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, we're going to space!' Silverstream shouted to everyone.

'Don't get too excited Silverstream,' Gallus replied, 'We're just in space for a few months really.'

'Ahh, don't get too excited,' Gene told them, 'It's just living in space, performing research and experiments up there, plus you guys aren't even going to pilot the shuttle that's going to get you there, Planetshine is.'

The young six were a bit discouraged by how they were not going to fly the shuttle that would get them there, but not enough that they won't be flying on it. For that night, they didn't even sleep a little bit, they talked all night about the next day, and what they would do in the space station.

It was the next day, the launch was at 10 am exactly, and the young six were not tired at all even though they didn't sleep a bit because of the excitement of going into space. They were told to report at the launch pad at 9 am sharp, and Planetshine was told to report there at 9:30. The reason for the young six to report to the launchpad 30 minutes earlier was because they could learn more about the space shuttle they were in, which was different from the other one.

Once it was 9 am, the young six reported to the launchpad, and upon seeing the space shuttle, they were just amazed by the size and especially the size of the engines, which looked like they could get anything into the air. The space shuttle this time had a huge difference from the other one. It was smaller, had crew cabins, and had only orbital manoeuvering engines instead of the other much more powerful engine. This was because the engine that would carry it into space would be mounted on the fuel tank instead of the actual shuttle itself.

The young six boarded the shuttle and went into their seats in the crew cabin. The creatures with wings were all fine with getting into their seats, while the ones without wings had to cling onto the ladder which was mounted on the floor, as the shuttle was mounted vertically again.

The young six waited for a while, 30 minutes actually, which was very boring, but once that 30 minutes was up, Planetshine greeted them in the crew cabin. She was in the crew cabin talking to the six. 'So, are you guys excited?' she asked, but she already knew the answer a long time ago.

'Oh yes!' Ocellus replied.

'Yona is excited,' Yona replied.

After talking about safety and other things, Planetshine flew into the cockpit 10 minutes before launch. She checked everything in the shuttle, making sure nothing would fail or break before launch. The launch time was at an optimal time where the space station would pass nearly above them, meaning that an orbital rendezvous wouldn't be very hard.

Once the checks were all good, and that it was 10 am, Planetshine throttled up the engines and started to ignite them. 'Mission control, do you hear me,' she said.

'Loud and clear, launching in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and we have liftoff.'

The shuttle had a pretty high TWR, at about 2, meaning that it shot into the air, leaving behind huge amounts of smoke. Planetshine started to do the gravity turn pretty early, just like the other shuttle, as she found that the best thing to do for shuttles in particular.

She then throttled down the 2 Vector engines on the bottom, as they are very fuel hungry and that she realised that she didn't have the largest fuel supply. After a while of burning, she decoupled the 2 solid boosters. Then, she quickly throttled up the Vector engines, trying to gain horizontal speed so that the circularisation burn wouldn't use up much delta-V.

Once the fuel tanks ran out, she was on a suborbital trajectory that required about 150m/s to circularise, which meant that it was above the 100m/s she hoped to aim for, but the shuttle itself had 500m/s delta-V, meaning it wasn't a problem. Planetshine let it to coast all the way up into space, while the 6 passengers onboard were just talking to each other and eating some snacks that the ponies back at the space center packed.

Once they were all in space, Planetshine did the circularisation burn, raising her periapsis all the way up above the Karman line. The next thing she did was she let mission control plan out a manoeuver to rendezvous with the space station. Once she got the information about the manoeuver, she waited until it was time to do it, which was only really in 1 minute or so.

From that point on, the six passengers took off their seatbelts, floating in zero gravity. They played about, doing tricks in the air and looking out of the window, amazed to see Equestria was that small. Then, the realised a little bit of force pushing them towards the back of the shuttle, which was Planetshine starting the manoeuver burn that would get them to the space station.

Once the burn was all done, the 5 creatures and 1 pony started to talk about things again and just playing around in the shuttle for the next 10 minutes or so to the intersect with the space station, which was at a very nice 30m apart. Once the shuttle got there, Planetshine turned the shuttle retrograde to the space station and started to burn that way to cancel out their velocity difference.

Once the velocity difference was an absolute zero, Planetshine turned on the RCS, and slowly started to dock the shuttle. It had an inline docking port, 4 RCS blocks, and 8 RCS thrusters for movement. She wasn't the best at docking with other things in space, as Dr. Whooves was the expert, but she still managed to dock it after 2 tries.

She then told the passengers onboard to transfer to the space station, which would be their new home for the next few months. Planetshine herself went to the crew cabin to help with the transfer to the space station. She helped the others carry the food, drinks and most importantly, snacks to the space station itself.

The others just threw the snacks into the space station, organising them later once in the space station. They all entered the space station after all that, and it looked relatively big from the inside than the outside. This was also Planetshine's first time to see inside the space station as well, and she explored every nook and cranny in there while the others looked around just like Planetshine, but much more excited.

Planetshine then said goodbye to the others, and went back into the shuttle, ready to undock and deorbit it. Once she got into the cockpit, she undocked the shuttle from the docking arm and started to coast along space until finding an ideal time to start her deorbit burn.

Once it was time to do it, she rotated the space shuttle all the way retrograde and started to burn the shuttle to get it on a trajectory that would get her just a bit further than the space center. She then pointed her nose up by 30 degrees instead of 40, as she thought it would be better for the shuttle she was in, and indeed she was correct, as it didn't provide as much of a drag than 40 degrees, meaning that speed drops weren't as bad.

After a few seconds, the shuttle was in the thicker parts of the atmosphere, and it was able to glide from that point on, so she glided all the way to the space center, lining up with the runway. She deployed the landing gear and having barely any horizontal speed, touched down at a pretty high vertical speed at 9m/s instead of the usual 1-2m/s.

She felt a bit dizzy after touching down and smashing the runway at such high vertical speeds, and instead of waiting there after the shuttle stopped, she quickly opened up the door and flew out. She then flew all the way over to the astronaut complex and went in. All her friends greeted her and they were really happy to see her, but she wasn't in the mood as she was a bit dizzy after touchdown. She trotted over to her bed and started to take a nap so that she could forget about the dizziness.