While Equestrian Aerospace was planning for a moon mission, the Equestrian Astronomy Society discovered something that was like the moon, but much smaller and looked more interesting. It had something nopony had ever seen. It had darker patches on its surface that appeared to be flat. The flats stretched for miles from one end to another. Equestrian Aerospace canceled their mission to the moon, and instead start planning a mission to Minmus, but first, they wanted to try something else.

Equestria never had something called a plane. The concept of a plane was made up by Planetshine. She thought that if a pegasus could fly, rockets could turn horizontal and 'fly,' then why not make something that had the sole purpose of flying. She owned a junkyard near the space center. It was also a space part company called 'Planetshine's Junkyard and Spacecraft Parts Co.' Her spacecraft parts were used in some of the missions, such as Orbiter I and Orbiter II.

While she was in Manehatten, she founded a new company called 'C7 Aerospace Division.' She came up with the name because C7 sounded cool and since she founded it, she thought it would be a nice division for Equestrian Aerospace. C7 was a company that would specialize in aviation equipment, such as jet engines.

Jet engines were a type of engine that would not use oxidizer and a lot of liquid fuel to run. Instead, it would take in air from an air intake and combust it with a tiny amount of liquid fuel (compared to rocket engines) and just like that, it produces thrust.

Since C7 is an aviation company, they also provided with lifting surfaces, such as tail fins and main wings for aircraft. Tail fins would sit at the back of the aircraft, creating a control surface for the plane to manoeuver with. They even made a type of command pod that would work as the front of a plane. Instead of calling it a command pod, they called it a cockpit. They only created one type of cockpit, and that was the Mk1 cockpit. It was a streamlined cockpit but it lacked heat resistance.

Back at the space center, they received a blueprint of a plane Planetshine designed, complete with parts to build one. Planetshine was very proud of what she did and hoped the administration would permit flying a plane. The space center had a runway that wasn't being used. The runway was built for use in the future and was pretty much useless at present.

At the spaceplane hanger, a newly built facility just for building spaceplanes, a plane that was capable of going outside the atmosphere. The concept of a spaceplane was hard to believe, but someday, it will be possible. The plane was in construction. It wasn't a particularly hard one to build, much easier than the rockets, but it was mostly due to its size in comparison to the size of the rockets.

The plane had a Mk1 cockpit, with swept wings, tail fins, and two Juno engines attached to the swept wings. The only downside was the wheels, they seemed easy to break, but for now, they were holding up pretty well. It was taxied onto the
end of the runway, ready to fly.

Since Gene returned to the space center, Lyra was the pony that would fly the plane. She boarded it via the door the Mk1 cockpit had and started up the engines. The engines sounded very odd, they had a higher pitched sound than any of the rocket engines, which had very low pitched sounds.

She throttled up the engines, and then she thought to herself. She had seen rockets accelerate very fast in a straight line, but why were the 'Juno' engines so slow? She knew they were jet engines, but she didn't know why they accelerate so slow. The only thing she knew was that they used air combustion to produce thrust.

The plane started to move slowly, but after a few seconds, it was traveling pretty fast. Lyra thought how in Equestria would 40kN of thrust would make her travel that fast, rockets would travel slowly even with 100kN of thrust. She then pitched up and the plane instantly pitched up. She then pitched it down, and the plane pitched down very quickly. Lyra was very satisfied with the plane. It was manoeuvrable and it was pretty fast.

Since the plane was very manoeuvrable, Lyra thought she could do some stunts. She asked mission control if she could do some stunts at the space center, but Gene said it was absolutely forbidden to do stunts in a 1km radius around the space center. She wanted to do stunts, but she also thought that what Gene said was very reasonable.

Gene contacted her when she was flying the craft and asked her if she by any chance would go fly to the old island airfield. Lyra was curious, she never knew there was an old island airfield. She asked Gene where it was, and Gene said it was at an island south-east of the space center.

Lyra flew the plane in that direction and pondered how fast the plane would travel. She leveled out the plane and then checked if the throttle was at 100%. The plane accelerated quickly, and it stopped accelerating when it reached 280m/s and it sustained it for a few seconds until she had to turn the plane to face the island runway. The island runway looked very old and had a rugged runway that was nothing like the smooth, asphalt runway at the space center.

The plane slowed down until about 50m/s when Lyra touched down on the rugged surface of the runway. When she touched down, she felt bumps in the runway that she had no idea how to describe. It was like rocks hitting against her and it felt very uncomfortable.

Once the plane came to a full stop, Lyra hopped off the plane to see what was at the old island airfield. She trotted to the hanger and found a few parts lying on the ground. They seemed like useable parts, but they looked very old. There was also a command pod, but the door was shut tight so Lyra didn't get a chance to see what was inside.

After that, she got a call from Gene. He wanted Lyra to fly back to the space center so the ponies at the research department could analyse the plane, and how it worked and everything.

Author's Note

I wanted to write this chapter before doing the Minmus mission because I wanted to plan out the two chapters for a longer time. I also wanted the chapters to be ones that tell a story of its own.

Anyways, I know in the game Jeb doesn't own C7, but I just wanted to make it so that Planetshine owned a junkyard and an aerospace company.