After a few other launches with the solid rockets to different parts of Equestria, near space, and conducting experiments, they had enough to get a few of the next tiers of the tech tree. 'Good work everypony,' said Wernher von Braun, the head of research and development at Equestrian Aerospace. 'We will now commence construction of the first rocket to space.'

The constructed rocket stood on the launchpad, waiting to be launched into space. This time, Dr. Whooves would be the pilot. He was a scientist but he was also trained to fly a rocket or plane but had no training in using SAS or planning manoeuvers.

He stood there, waiting for instructions to launch.

3, 2, 1, Liftoff!

'Dr. Whooves, this is Gene from mission control, do not initiate a gravity turn, it's not important to do one right now, we need to get into outer space and not into orbit around Equestria.' Gene said to Dr. Whooves.

'Ok Gene, I'll do what you say, but next time, please say it before firing up the engines.' Dr. Whooves replied.

Dr. Whooves looked outside via the little window on the command pod and thought, 'Hmm... I think that I should observe the mystery goo and take a temperature reading from here.'

He opened up the mystery goo containment unit and observed it mid-flight. It seemed like the goo looked and felt like it was right at home, but it was at such a high altitude that Dr. Whooves thought something was off by a lot. How could something like that react in the same way at a very high altitude and on the ground? It didn't seem to make sense to Dr. Whooves.

He transmitted the data he observed to the research and development department and kept a copy of it himself for later analysis. He thought to himself, 'That should make the ponies in the research and development department curious.'

Once leaving the atmosphere, he conducted another test of the mystery goo and a simple temperature analysis. The temperature looked like it was very hot and the mystery goo had no reaction at all. He kept the mystery goo data for later analysis and transmitted the temperature readings from outside of the atmosphere.

He kept going on and on to high above Equestria. He saw Equestria as a whole after he was at apoapsis. Equestria looked very different when he was high above it. Equestria covered about half the planet and what's outside of Equestria could be seen by Dr. Whooves.

Once he was going down, he decoupled his command pod from the boosters and prepared for reentry. He faced his command pod retrograde with a heat shield attached to the front of it to protect it from overheating. 'Dr. Whooves to mission control,' he said, 'I am going to reenter the atmosphere about now.'

'Ok, Dr. Whooves, be careful not to tip your command pod over, it has a chance of being catastrophic.'

Dr. Whooves braced for the 5G deceleration and after he was about 3000m above surface, he deployed his parachute. The command pod slowly fell back down to be retrieved by the transponders.

Data Gained: 21
Data Value: 6
Science Earned: 126

Author's Note

If you guys are asking if any of the pictures don't look to right either because of the delta-v required to go to orbit or to another planet, it's because of me using the cheats menu. I'm using the cheats menu mostly because I'm too lazy to do the actual missions because I'm doing other things like this.

Also, the interplanetary missions and the missions to the moon and Minmus will be much longer and might have multiple chapters.