Chapters 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.
'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
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.
Author's Note
Next chapter is going to be about going to Minmus, other than that, I wrote orbited around Equestria because ponies would most likely refer to the planet as Equestria.
Orbiter I
After unlocking a fair bit of the lower parts of the tech tree, Equestrian Aerospace had the tech to go to orbit and analyze the space around Equestria, and so they constructed a new bigger and better rocket named Orbiter I. Orbiter I was much more advanced than the last few rockets, as the first stage is more efficient because it used liquid fuel and oxidizer instead of solid fuel.
Orbiter I stood there on the launch pad, with Planetshine in the Mk1 command pod, ready for takeoff. 'Planetshine,' Gene called out, 'Are you ready for takeoff?'
She replied, 'Yes I am Gene, I'm so excited, aren't you excited too?'
Gene said yes to her, and started the countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Liftoff!
The rocket had a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than the last one, so it took off a bit faster. Planetshine withstood more than 6Gs acceleration and had to bear the extremely uncomfortable feeling of being squashed to the ground, or in this case, her chair. She had to wait a few seconds until the acceleration calmed down by a bit to start the gravity turn needed to get her into orbit.
She started off with a slow gravity turn, and then she started to get aggressive with it because she saw her vertical speed was a bit too high and her apoapsis would be about 60000m, and the atmosphere ends at 70000m. She detached the side boosters when she was in a sub-orbital trajectory so that the boosters will fall down into Equestria and get destroyed because nopony wanted debris in orbit. The main booster was an LV-45 Swivel engine, which had enough gimbal to keep her rocket steady and it had enough delta-V left to get all the way to orbit and back to Equestria.
After burning at the apoapsis for a bit, the rocket's periapsis finally reached above the Karman line or the edge of the atmosphere. After completing 2 orbits of Equestria, and doing a bit of recreational snacking, Planetshine turned retrograde to put herself onto a collision course to somewhere out of Equestria, which means she needs to wait a long time until the transponders get to her.
A good thing she realised right after retro burning was that Equestria had an atmosphere, so she could slow herself down and end up right in Equestria, and not somewhere like outside of Equestria. After going below the Karman line, she decoupled her boosters and at about 30000m, the boosters exploded due to overheating in Equestria's atmosphere. At least she had a heat shield to protect her from the reentry heating.
She deployed the parachute at about 1km above the ground and the command pod slowly fell down and somehow, due to extreme luck, landed on one of Manehatten's tallest buildings. The Operations Manager, Gus, realised that he didn't need to retrieve it back, it would the landing spot of the command pod of the first ever rocket that got into orbit. Planetshine crawled out of the command pod, thrilled to go and see Manehatten. She contacted the administrators and her fellow astronauts that she would explore Manehatten.
She flew down the building (because she is a pegasus) and she was greeted by a lot of ponies cheering for her. They all knew that she was the first ever pony to go to orbit and back to Equestria. She told her story to the ponies that were with her the story of how she got into orbit and everything that happened during that time. Then, she contacted the administration that she would like to have a holiday in Manehatten. The administration agreed to have her go on a holiday in Manehatten, and even booked a hotel for her to stay in for her holiday.
Data gained: 52
After gaining a lot of science from the first ever time going into orbit, Equestrian Aerospace had enough science to get some new parts. They unlocked the part of the tech tree that leads to more science equipment. They constructed another rocket, but this time, they upgraded the Orbiter I with some solid rocket boosters.
This time, Dr. Whooves was the pilot of the mission, because Planetshine was on holidays in Manehatten and this mission was to gather science from outer space, so Dr. Whooves would be the most reasonable pilot. Orbiter II was a rocket that would only use 'Thumper' boosters to get it to a high altitude with some vertical speed so the LVtT-30 'Reliant' engines wouldn't need to burn for so long, so there would be more delta-V to spare.
The rocket was designed to be able to go into a polar orbit and then be able to change inclination into an equatorial orbit. It was also designed to get into an eccentric orbit, so Dr. Whooves could collect science from high above Equestria.
Orbiter II stood on the launchpad, ready to be launched. The rocket going through exterior safety checks, and Gene was replaced by Lyra. She was a very good pilot just like Planetshine, but she was a backup pilot just in case Planetshine was not there. Dr. Whooves even asked the EA administration why she wasn't chosen to be the pilot of the mission, and they just said that he was a good enough pilot.
Orbiter II was going to be launched in about 1 hour. Dr. Whooves checked if everything was working, his spacesuit working fine and if the science gear was working.
Lyra sparked up the launchpad after about an hour waiting, Dr. Whooves initiated the first stage. The solid rockets accelerated him slowly because his thrust-to-weight ratio wasn’t very high. He initiated a very slight gravity turn in a polar direction and waited for the solid boosters to flame out.
After the boosters flamed out, he decoupled the boosters and initiated the next stage, which was the main boosters. He adjusted the thrust limiter of the LVT-45 ‘Swivel’ engine to 25% and fired up his LVT-30 ‘Reliant engine to max so he could get into orbit. He initiated an aggressive gravity turn so he could gather up more horizontal speed than vertical speed.
After having his apoapsis higher than the Karman line, he still had his ‘Reliant’ engines burning, but he turned off his ‘Swivel’ engine. He placed his apoapsis at more than 2500000m above Equestria but he was on a collision course with Equestria.
After reaching the apoapsis, he turned his rocket prograde and burned with the ‘Swivel’ engine. Right after he started burning, he forgot to decouple the ‘Reliant’ engine and turn the thrust limiter of the Swivel engines to the max. The ‘Reliant engines and the fuel tanks were on a collision course with Equestria, and there was no way that it would leave debris in orbit.
After burning for a few seconds, Dr. Whooves’ rocket’s periapsis was above the Karman line. He conducted some experiments high above Equestria and did an EVA. He did an EVA report and he was the second pony ever to do an EVA while in orbit. He transmitted the data to the space center and kept a copy of it for further analysis after recovery.
After waiting a long, long time to get back to periapsis, only about 1 hour to be precise, he did another EVA so he could see Equestria as a whole close up instead of far away. He did some science experiments, transmitted it, and held on to a copy of it. Once he was near the equator of Equestria, he pointed his rocket in the ‘normal’ direction to change his inclination. He had to burn for a long time and then realised that he didn’t have enough fuel to do a full inclination change, so he left just enough delta-V to get back down to Equestria.
His orbital inclination was perfectly along the equator, but it was close enough that a bit of an error in the retrograde burn wouldn’t fling him out of Equestria and into Abyssinia. He waited until the apoapsis and did another EVA and a lot of science experiments.
Next, he pointed his rocket retrograde and burnt until all his delta-V was all used up. He was on a collision course with Equestria and then, he decoupled his booter and his command pod was the only thing that remained, with the science gear, heat shield and a parachute.
Once he entered the atmosphere, he realised that the staging was a bit off and that the parachute would deploy when he entered the lower parts of the atmosphere. He quickly disarmed the parachute and then waited for the rocket to fall to a good point for him to deploy the parachute. The rocket reached about 2000m above the water. He deployed the parachute and the command pod slowly fell all the way down to the ocean.
The ocean he splashed down in was the one dividing Equestria and Griffinstone, also known as the Celestial Sea. Instead of sending transponders, Gus contacted a cargo ship that was bringing supplies from Equestria to Griffinstone to retrieve the command pod.
Data gathered: 231
Author's Note
If you think that the science gained was a bit too much, it could well be it. I was too lazy to do the mission so I used hyperedit to do the 'missions.' Anyways, I'm going to put in pictures when I get the chance to.
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
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.
While Equestrian Aerospace was planning out a lunar landing mission, the Equestrian Astronomical Society discovered a new moon of Equestria. It was named Minmus because of its small size. It looked like a minty ball that had darker patches that seemed to be flat but the overall geography of Minmus was mountainous, with plateaus and a lot of slopes. It was also located a lot further away from Equestria than the moon, but it looked better to visit.
Once Equestrian Aerospace heard news about Minmus, they quickly canceled their lunar landing mission in favour of Minmus. They thought that it would be much interesting than the moon, with its minty surface and extremely low gravity.
At the administration building, Wernher von Braun held a meeting with Gus Kerman, Gene Kerman, and Planetshine. Wernher said, ‘Planetshine, are you up for this mission? We know you are the best pilot of all but are you up for it? Dr. Whooves volunteered, so I presume you would be up for this mission.’
Planetshine replied, ‘Yes, I am up for this mission.’
Wernher replied, ‘Ok. Gus, do you think that the rocket that has been planned get to Minmus and back?’
Gus said. ‘I’m sure, you know me, every operation I do turns out fine.’
Wernher replied to Gus, ‘Ok, you two ponies can go, I will be talking to Gene about much more important things.
The two ponies trotted out the administration building. Plantshine went to the astronaut complex while Gus went to the VAB.
Planetshine met up with Dr. Whooves in the astronaut complex. 'Dr. Whooves, are you excited for this? Well, I think you are definitely excited.'
Dr. Whooves replied, ' It's just a moon that looks like a huge mint ball. Anyways, I am obviously excited for this, I mean, how am I not excited, its a newly discovered planet, nopony knew about it until now.
'Great!' Planetshine said excitedly, 'I'll prepare snacks for the mission and I'll check its database in the tracking station.'
While Planetshine prepared snacks for the mission, Gus was instructing every pony in the VAB to start constructing the Minmus lander.
The Minmus lander was a lander like nothing else. It was designed to be able to be rendezvous with a refueller which was put into Minmus orbit. The refueller was build to be the transfer stage to Minmus and be able to refuel the lander once and be able to get back to Equestria. The lander would be able to do a direct ascent back home instead of docking and using the refueller to get back home.
'Lyra!' Planetshine shouted across the astronaut complex, 'Get the backup snacks, I don't think there are enough snacks for me and Dr. Whooves for a Minmus mission.'
Lyra responded, 'Ok, but don't eat too many snacks, they are unhealthy for you. I'll make you some homemade food tonight, like dandelion sandwiches, carrots and a bunch of hay.'
'Thanks Lyra,' Planetshine replied. 'One other thing, where's Bon Bon?'
'Bon Bon's going to join us when she completes astronaut training, which according to my memory, should be in 3 days. Why do you ask?' Lyra said.
'Just curious.' Planetshine replied.
The rocket finished construction the next day. Planetshine and Dr. Whooves climbed into two separate command pods. Dr. Whooves was in the lander while Planetshine was in the refueller. Then, the rocket was transported outside the VAB. It was a rocket that was larger than any rocket Equestrian Aerospace has ever built.
It had 4 side boosters using the LV-TX87 'Bobcat' engine with a Mainsail engine as the main booster. The Mainsail engine was a beast of its own kind. It was effective at all altitudes and to top it off, it had a staggering 1500kN of thrust. The rocket also had a trick up its sleeve with the staging. It used a type of staging called onion staging, which the side boosters would feed fuel into the main booster which meant when the side boosters decoupled, the main booster would be full of fuel instead of being half empty.
At mission control, Gene started the countdown. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and liftoff!
The rocket accelerated very quickly, reaching a supersonic speed 10 seconds after liftoff. Planetshine was ok with the acceleration, but for Dr. Whooves, it was another story. Dr. Whooves was sitting upside down, which meant he had to hang on to his seatbelt, which was very uncomfortable for him.
Dr. Whooves asked Planetshine, 'Why am I in the more uncomfortable seat?'
Planetshine responded, 'What about me, I don't get the chance to set hooves on Minmus.'
'True,' Dr. Whooves replied.
Right after the conversation, Planetshine initiated a gravity turn. The gravity turn was not very aggressive, though it felt like the rocket did an extremely aggressive gravity turn. When it reached about 10000m above sea level, Planetshine got more aggressive with the gravity turn, tilting to a 45-degree angle and when the rocket reached 30000m, she decoupled the side boosters and tilted the rocket nearly facing horizontally. The side boosters flawlessly decoupled and she burnt with the main booster and the main booster kept on going.
The main booster then shut off after the rocket's apoapsis reached above the Karman line or 70000m above sea level, and Planetshine left it to coast it's way into space. 'Dr. Whooves,' Planetshine said, 'Do you want some snacks. I have a ton of snacks I snuck in before boarding when nopony was looking.'
'Sure, that would be nice. Anyways, Lyra told me that she prepared food for us to eat during the mission.' Dr. Whooves replied.
Planetshine opened her snack packet and handed one to Dr. Whooves via a docking port which also doubled as an airlock or passageway along the two command pods. She then realised that she forgot to deploy the fairings of the rocket so she deployed them. The fairings deployed in a clamshell way. It wasn't like one of the fairing tests she saw, which had them deployed like confetti.
Once they were at apoapsis, Planetshine throttled up the engine to get them into a circular orbit around Equestria. The burn took a short while to do and then she realised something. She had way too much fuel left than intended. She contacted Gene and asked him, 'Uhh, Gene, is it ok if I use the Mainsail engines as the transfer stage, There is still a lot of fuel in this stage.'
Gene quickly replied, 'Well, according to our readings on the fuel level, there should be enough delta-V to get to Minmus, but I am not too sure about that. Anyways, you would have hard times trying to manoeuver it, the reaction wheels in your command pods would have pretty much no effect on the whole rocket. But I think you should burn using the Mainsail stage.'
Author's Note
Well, that's part of the Minmus mission. What happened during the flight was what actually happened to me during my first Minmus mission.
‘Planetshine,’ Dr. Whooves said. ‘Are we going to burn the transfer to Minmus using the Mainsail stage or are we going to do what the original plan was?’
Planetshine replied, ‘Gene said that we would maybe burn using the Mainsail engine. I mean, it should have enough delta-V to get to Minmus. Even if we don’t have enough delta-V, we could use the planned transfer stage.’
Dr. Whooves had a feeling that it wouldn’t work. Planetshine on the other hoof, thought it would be a great idea, up to the point that she would be able to go down to the surface of Minmus with Dr. Whooves. She reassured Dr. Whooves that they could use the transfer stage just in case. The fine tuning would use that stage.
'Gene, are you done making the manoeuver node for Minmus?' Planetshine asked.
Gene wasn't responding to her. Planetshine got worried. Why wasn't Gene responding to her? She instead contacted mission control instead. 'Mission control, do you hear me?' she said.
Another pony replied, 'I'm sorry that Gene isn't here. He is getting a few snacks for us. He thought that you guys wouldn't be contacting us for a bit of time, so he thought it would be a good idea to get us a few snacks.'
'Mkay, just tell Gene to be at mission control all the time and not get snacks for everypony else.' Planetshine responded.
Planetshine and Dr. Whooves waited for a while, relaxing while all of a sudden, Gene contacted the two ponies about their manoeuver to get to Minmus. 'Planetshine, you must do this manoeuver with one burn with the Mainsail engine, and also don't forget to burn a bit earlier than the node itself. That should make the manoeuver more efficient.' Gene said.
Planetshine responded, 'Ok, but also what about the Mainsail engine and fuel tanks? We can't just put them in orbit around Equestria.'
Gene replied almost immediately, 'Don't worry, the manoeuver node we made will put the rocket on a collision course with Minmus. All you would need to do is burn radial out when you are about halfway to Minmus.'
Dr. Whooves asked Planetshine, 'Uhm... When are we going to start doing the burn?'
Planetshine replied, 'About 10 minutes.'
'Ok, you know, I feel like we need some better science gear. We have a barometer, which would be pretty much useless, but then the Science Jr, gravity scanner and mystery goo are pretty useful. I think we need a thing like seismic scanners and atmosphere analysis tools.'
'I think that I have a seismic scanner somewhere in my junkyard.'
'Why would you not bring it on board?'
'I thought we wouldn't need it.'
Dr. Whooves facehoofed. He wanted to do seismic scans on the surface of Minmus, so the ponies in Equestria would know more about Minmus. He had to accept that Planetshine didn't bring it on their mission. He said to Planetshine, 'I think that could be for another mission instead of this one.'
After waiting for about 10 minutes, Planetshine faced the rocket in the direction of the manoeuver node and fired up the Mainsail engine. After a 30 second burn, they were on a collision course with Minmus. She then decoupled the Mainsail stage, turned the command pod retrograde, and fired up the Terrier engine of the refueller. The rocket now was now going to have a rendezvous with the moon with a periapsis of 20km.
Planetshine double checked the trajectory of the rocket while Dr. Whooves performed some experiments while in his command pod. 'Planetshine,' Dr. Whooves said, 'Do you want to go on an EVA? If you do it would be Equestria's second ever spacewalk, I did the first one.'
'Good idea,' she replied.
Planetshine put on her spacesuit and opened the hatch. She went outside, looking around the rocket. She turned on her jetpack to fly around the rocket for an inspection on the outside. Then, she reported on the conditions of the EVA to Dr. Whooves. Planetshine had never felt what it was like to have zero gravity, other than falling from the sky, so she enjoyed her time outside her little command pod. It felt really nice to have no gravity around her, and it was fun for her to play around with the jetpacks.
'Doctor,' she called out, 'Do you want to EVA as well? You could see Equestria as a blue marble this far away from it.'
'Hmm, if we could see Equestria as a whole, then we should be... Sweet Celestia!'
Dr. Whooves glanced at his altimeter. It said that the rocket, which was more like a ship now, was at about 1 million meters away from Equestria. It baffled him how quickly they were able to even get to 1 million meters above Equestria in such a short time.
'I'll EVA right away, I want to see the blue marble with you,' he said.
Dr. Whooves put on his spacesuit and opened the hatch on his command pod. Instead of jetpacking like Planetshine, he instead grabbed onto the command pod hatch. He positioned himself so he could have a good view of Equestria as a whole.
'Planetshine, do you want a photo of you facing Equestria? I think it would make a great photo for this mission.' Dr. Whooves asked.
Planetshine replied, 'Good idea, do you have a camera with you?'
'Actually, we both have cameras, they are mounted in between the flashlights on our helmets.'
'Never knew that, how did you know?'
'I just know... Now can you position yourself a bit on the left, I feel like getting the rocket in as well.'
'Ok, so here?'
'Yep, perfect. Do you want to see the photo I just took?'
'Certainly!'
Dr. Whooves showed the photo of Planetshine floating in space with part of the rocket showing and a beautiful blue marble in the background. She really liked the photo and then, she transmitted a digital copy of it to the space center for everypony else to see.
The two ponies then went inside their respective command pods, ready for lunch. At the space center, it was noon, so pretty much every pony was eating except the ponies at mission control who were doing lunch duty. Planetshine took out the food she had. Planetshine's command pod had everything she needed, such as food, snacks, more snacks while Dr. Whooves' command pod had all the science equipment and some monopropellant tanks for jetpack refueling.
Planetshine looked at the food, realising that she had Lyra's homemade food. She offered Dr. Whooves some dandelion sandwiches. Dr. Whooves was surprised that the food Lyra made wasn't dried food, like what the space center would provide astronauts with.
The two ate the sandwiches slowly and drank some packaged water with it. The water was in little bags that had a nozzle that would dispense drops of water. It also wouldn't dispense water unless squeezed, which prevented spills. Planetshine ate the sandwiches quickly and drank the water later while Dr. Whooves ate the sandwiches very slowly, savouring it so he wouldn't need to eat the dried food that was provided.
After eating, Planetshine took a quick nap while Dr. Whooves watched over the rocket. Dr. Whooves also conducted a few experiments. He then had to go on an EVA, so he could reset the mystery goo units and the Science Jr. When he went on his EVA, the blue marble known as Equestria was getting smaller. He pondered how something so large would become so small in such a short time.
'Planetshine!' he called out, 'Look out your window, Equestria is getting smaller and smaller.'
Planetshine peeked outside the window. Equestria looked like the size of a big marble and not something huge. She also started pondering about how it was possible that something so huge could be so small. Dr. Whooves went back in his command pod and then started to talk to the other two astronauts that haven't been on any missions.
'Lyra, Derpy, look at this picture I took when I was on an EVA, can you guess what that blue thing was, and also dont forget that grey thing that's on its left?' he said.
Lyra replied to him after a few seconds of waiting, 'I guess the blue thing is Equestria, but that grey thing, I don't have any idea on what that is, it doesn't look like anything I know about.'
Dr. Whooves then responded, 'The blue thing is indeed Equestria, and the grey thing is the moon. I think you wouldn't have guessed that one because the moon is white when seen on the surface of Equestria, but up here, it looks greyish.'
Then, Derpy responded curiously while looking at the picture, 'Hmm, what is that?'
'It's the moon and Equestria, It looks very different from where Dr. Whooves and Planetshine are at,' Lyra told Derpy.
Planetshine and Dr. Whooves then went sleeping as the rocket wouldn't arrive at Minmus until the next day. Just before sleeping, Dr. Whooves set up an alarm about 15 minutes before the encounter as a safeguard, just in case the two ponies overslept.
Author's Note
I think I messed up the gravioli detector with the seismic thing...
Author's Note
There will be a lot of landings, trust me... (and a lot of repetition)
Landings
'Planetshine wake up, PLANETSHINE!' Dr. Whooves shouted
Planetshine finally woke up from sleep. 'What, I was dreaming of planting a flag somewhere on Minmus. I was nearly going to plant it when you literally shouted at me,' she said.
'Well, look out the window, you see that minty ball, that's Minmus, our destination.' Dr. Whooves replied.
'Oh wow, can we go EVA so we can take some pictures of it and all that and send them all back home?'
'That's a really good idea, I'll put on my spacesuit and everything. We can take a selfie together.'
The two ponies put on their spacesuits and then they went outside. Dr. Whooves had a camera in his hoof. The camera was small, unlike the big ones in Equestria. (It's basically a GoPro) Dr. Whooves positioned himself next to Planetshine with Minmus in the background. He took the picture and then Planetshine went back to her command pod. Dr. Whooves performed some experiments high above Minmus and then went back in his pod.
After a bit of time of coasting along in space, the rocket was near its periapsis of 20000m above Minmus, Planetshine burnt retrograde so she would get into a stable orbit around Minmus. Minmus up close looked like something that was edible, like mint ice cream, but the moon was indeed made of rock and solid materials, so eating it wasn't an option.
Once they were in orbit around Minmus, Planetshine asked mission control, 'Mission control, this is Planetshine, am I able to land on Minmus like Dr. Whooves.'
Mission control responded, 'Planetshine, you are able to land on Minmus. The only problem is that you don't have landing legs so you might have to touch down very slowly so it doesn't break the engine.'
Planetshine was very happy to have mission control let her be able to land on Minmus. She then plotted a place to land on Minmus and then decoupled Dr. Whooves' lander. The only thing was that Dr. Whooves didn't know that Planetshine had another better place to land than him.
Dr. Whooves deorbited his lander but Planetshine waited a few minutes and then she deorbited her 'lander.' Planetshine aimed for the edge of a plateau overlooking the vast flats that Dr. Whooves would land at. After a little while of coasting along, Dr. Whooves started his suicide burn a bit early because he wanted a nice gentle touchdown. Planershine on the other hoof wasn't the best at safety precautions and did her suicide burn as late as possible.
Dr. Whooves started burning first, he burnt retrograde when he was about 1km above the ground so he could have a safe landing, while Planetshine was still waiting for an optimal time to do her suicide burn. After a few seconds of waiting, she started her burn. The burn didn't take long as Minmus' gravity is so low and that there was only 160m/s of speed to kill off.
Once she touched down with a speed of only 0.2 m/s on the very edge of the plateau, she put on her spacesuit and went out for an EVA. From her perspective, she could see Dr. Whooves struggling to get his lander onto the surface of the flats, burning his engine slowly to get a very optimal touchdown. She then took out a flag from her pod and planted it. She shoved the flag deep into the ground and turned a knob that would extend the flag.
After a few seconds of trial and error, Dr. Whooves finally touched down. Once he was on the ground, he contacted Planetshine, 'Planetshine, have you landed because I finally did.'
She replied, 'Yeah, I landed like ages ago, I'm on the edge of a plateau just west from you.'
'Nice! I'm going to perform some experiments, for now, I'll meet with you later.'
'Ok.'
After Dr. Whooves performed experiments and scans of Minmus' flats, he put on his spacesuit and went on an EVA. He looked west and indeed there it was. Planetshine waved at Dr. Whooves and then she contacted him, 'Dr. Whooves, do you see me?'
'Yes, indeed I do.' He said.
'Did you see me wave at you?'
'Yep, from where I am, I can see you clearly, I don't think we landed that far away from each other.'
'Can you meet me up on top of this plateau?'
'That's a good idea, I'll come up as fast as I can, I know you don't like waiting.'
Dr. Whooves climbed in his command pod, without bothering to take off his spacesuit. He throttled his engine to about 1/3 thrust and aimed for Planetshine. His trajectory was a little off though, but he could always do some manoeuvers while landing to get the landing right near Planetshine.
Dr. Whooves waited until the lander got to where Planetshine was. He then started doing a retrograde burn so he could kill off all his horizontal and vertical speed. He landed right near Planetshine, only about a meter away to be exact. He quickly got off the lander and landed just beside Planetshine.
Planetshine greeted him and then told Dr. Whooves to look into the distance. Once he faced that way, what he saw was just amazing. The flats looked endless and the mountains surrounding it looked gorgeous. The two took a few selfies with the small camera they had and then sent them back to the astronauts back home in Equestria.
Bon Bon was the first one that saw the photo come through. She then told every pony else in the space center to see the photo of the two ponies on Minmus with a flag and the landscape in the background. The ponies thought the photo was very beautiful. The landscape looked extremely huge compared to the two ponies.
Some of the ponies at the space center were very surprised they even landed. They had absolutely no experience in landing spacecraft. This was their first time ever doing a landing. They had done simulations of landings though, but doing real ones were unheard of.
Dr. Whooves suggested it would be a good time to go and the two ponies climbed into their command pods. Planetshine in the refueller and Dr. Whooves in the lander. Dr. Whooves ran some experiments and Planetshine just got her refueller into Minmus orbit. Dr. Whooves jumped to another biome. The biome he first thought about would be another flat. The other flats had a chance of being different and could solve why Minmus had such huge flats.
While Planetshine was putting her refueller in a low Minmus orbit, Dr. Whooves fired up his engines and burnt a little bit so he could end up in another place. He thought the smaller flats would be a pretty good place to land on. He coasted along in space above Minmus for a while and then started his suicide burn closer to the ground than before. After touchdown, he realised he needed to refuel.
Dr. Whooves then went on an EVA to take surface samples and since he had 10 flags in his command pod, he thought it would be a good idea to plant one every time he landed. Dr. Whooves shoved the flag's end into the ground. The ground felt very solid, but it didn't feel right to him. It felt like ice and not some rocky substance he thought it would be.
He picked up the chipped crystals from planting the flag and then headed back in his lander. He looked at the crystals. Inside his lander, it was about 25 degrees Celcius, so if it was a watery substance, it would most definitely melt. The crystals didn't melt, so that rose some questions for him. How were these flats formed, and how are they perfectly flat with absolutely bumps or ridges. The only conclusion he would have was that it could be minty lakes on the surface on Minmus somehow crystallised.
Dr. Whooves waited for a while to have the refueller in the right place to rendezvous and dock. He had to wait about an hour until the refueller was in an optimal position for a rendezvous. Dr. Whooves started up his engines and then did a very aggressive gravity turn. He knew that doing a gravity turn very early on a body that had no atmosphere would save more delta-V and since the refueller was in a very low orbit, was also useful for him to dock with it.
Once Dr. Whooves was in orbit, he did a circularisation burn. His first intercept with the refueller wasn't the most optimal one, only having a separation of about 2km. He did a small correction burn, only burning about 5m/s for a rendezvous with the refueller with a separation of only 30m. After getting to the closest point, he matched speeds with the refueller.
The only problem now was that he had no RCS to dock with the refueller. He then thought of a radical new plan. He called Planetshine, 'Planetshine, you know the docking port on your command pod? Try to make it target my docking port and I'll make my lander point in the direction of your docking port.'
Planetshine did what Dr. Whooves said to her. Then, Dr. Whooves throttled his engine just by a little bit. He then quickly shut down his engine, slowly floating to the docking port. The lander and refueller docked together. Planetshine started the fuel transfer while Dr. Whooves waited for a while waiting for the fuel to transfer.
After transferring the fuel, he undocked his lander and then he deorbited it for another time. He this time aimed for the highlands. The highlands looked extremely high. After landing there, he did some experiments again and then he realised something. His altimeter said the elevation of the highlands were 5612m high. Equestria's highest peak was only just over 8km high. Comparing to Equestria's size, Minmus was extremely small. The height of the highlands on Minmus was about 2.5 km higher than Equestria's highest peak.
He then conducted some experiments and went on a quick EVA to look at the scenery from that height. He jetpacked over to the nearest cliff edge to take a look at the scenery. It looked absolutely beautiful. He could see a lot of things up at where he was, the flats, plateau tops, and the flats.
He then set his next target to be the lowlands. The lowlands are the exact opposite of the highlands. They were low in elevation instead of being very high in elevation. The lowlands that Dr. Whooves was targeting were the ones near the flats. The lowlands near the flats were only 50m above zero elevation. The altimeter was calibrated so that zero elevation was the surface of the flats, so the lowlands he was aiming for would be 50m above the flats.
Once he was on a trajectory to the lowlands, he relaxed for a while, waiting for the right time to do the suicide burn. Once his did his suicide burn and landed, he conducted more experiments and went out on an EVA to plant a flag. The flag was a little hard to plant, the rock below him was very tough. It resisted a few flag plantings, but Dr. Whooves finally planted the flag on the 9th attempt.
After that, he headed for the refueller again. This time he only had to wait 10 minutes instead of 1 hour. He did what he did last time, do a very precise rendezvous of only a 30m separation and dock without RCS. Once he finished refuelling, Planetshine only had about 600m/s delta-V left, enough for one more refuel. Dr. Whooves then aimed for the poles of Minmus.
The plan was to raise his apoapsis and then do an inclination adjustment. The inclination adjustment at the apoapsis was only a 30m/s burn as it was very high up Minmus. Once he was at the poles, he started to do a retrograde burn to get the lander out of orbit.
Once he finished his suicide burn, he landed softly. Then he did some did some more experiments and scans and went on an EVA to plant a flag. After getting back in his lander, he then headed for the south poles. The south poles essentially looked the same and have about the same elevation. He did even more experiments on the surface of the south poles and did another EVA to plant another flag.
Once he was done with that, he was ready to go back home with all that data he collected.
'Planetshine, I'm ready to go home, are you too?' Dr. Whooves said.
Planetshine responded, 'Ok Dr. Whooves, race you home!'
'It's not a race.'
'Well, I'm a bit bored so can I make it a race?'
'Alright, but there is a chance I might go for a flyby of the moon because it seems to be in a good place for a flyby back home.'
'You know, doing a flyby of the moon will boost up your speed, so you could be home faster, but I can use up the rest of the fuel accelerating back home.'
Dr. Whooves fired up the engines in his lander, and soon after, he did a circularisation burn to get into orbit. The only downside was that he was in a polar orbit, so going to the moon for a flyby would take more delta-V than it would in an equatorial orbit of Minmus. He contacted mission control to make a manoeuver node to take him on a low flyby of the moon.
The moon flyby had a periapsis of just over 10000m, about 5km above the surface of the moon. If it was Planetshine, she would've edited her manoeuver node so that her periapsis would be about 5m above the surface of the moon for a thrill-seeking experience.
Dr. Whooves started his ejection burn to get to the moon while Planetshine just did an average burn to get her back to Equestria. Once Dr. Whooves was done with his burn he waited for a while. The trajectory of his lander would get back to Equestria without any manoeuvers. Planetshine was also on a collision course with Equestria. She then burned prograde to get her speed up and up by using her remaining 400m/s delta-V.
Dr. Whooves took a quick nap while Planetshine was doing some recreational snacking. Planetshine loved eating snacks. Her favourite was dandelions because she liked the flavour of them. After Dr. Whooves woke up, he was near the moon. His altimeter read 60km above the surface of the moon.
He ran some scans and experiments when he was high above the moon. He then waited for a while to be at his moon periapsis. The moon from his perspective seemed huge. It looked like it has a lot of craters scattered along the surface and had huge dark patches on the surface. He then quickly took a few photos of the moon and analyzed his scans. The scans detected that the dark patches were most likely craters from asteroids that have crashed into the surface of the moon.
Once he was at his periapsis, he started to run some more experiments and scans. He wanted to discover what was on the surface of the moon and learn more about the moon from a scientific standpoint. The scans that he ran when he was flying by the moon showed that no less than a few hundred asteroids have collided into the surface of the moon. He then started pondering how those asteroids didn't collide into the surface of Equestria.
'Planetshine' Dr. Whooves said, 'Where are you? I'm past the moon.'
Planetshine replied, 'I'm past the moon, I'm like way past it. I sort of accelerated my spacecraft and it's going to crash into Equestria in about 30 minutes.'
'Seriously, I thought I was going to win, the moon would've given me some extra speed. Anyways, I'm going to get back home in about 35 minutes. I'm sad that you beat me by 5 minutes.'
'Yeah.'
Planetshine entered Equestria's atmosphere while Dr. Whooves was still coasting along space. She decoupled the fuel tanks and pointed her command pod retrograde. The heat shield proved to be very good and protected her from all reentry heating. After enduring over 10G deceleration, at about 2000m above the Celestial Sea, she deployed her parachute.
She splashed down into the Celestial Sea and then the space center sent out transponders to recover her from splashdown. Then, the administration realised something, there was a yacht heading in Planetshine's direction. They contacted the captain of the yacht to recover Planetshine instead of sending transponders to save bits.
Dr. Whooves was the next one to enter the atmosphere. He did what Planetshine did. He decoupled his command pod from the fuel and engines so he could re-enter safely. He pointed his command pod retrograde so the heat shield would shield him from all the reentry heat.
Instead of splashing down in the sea, he would land on the ground. His trajectory would place him near his hometown, Ponyville. He then deployed his parachute. After deploying his parachute, he landed just north of Ponyville. Then, he crawled out of his command pod and some ponies after seeing him, ran to him and asked him what happened to him.
Since he landed near Ponyville, Equestrian Aerospace would mark that site near Ponyville the remnants of the first ever lander that landed on another celestial body. He then called the administration and the other astronauts that he would have a long holiday after the extremely long journey to Minmus and back with a lot of landings.
The administration agreed that he should have an extra long holiday instead of having a normal holiday. Planetshine also asked for a holiday, but she kept it short as she wanted to get back to the astronauts at the space center.
Data: 449
Author's Note
This is what I really did in my first KSP mission...
Author's Note
Note: I actually did this mission before the moon mission. And yes, I did use the Aeris 4A.
Oh yeah, if you didn't know, I unlocked the aerodynamics path and the science path first and then the rocket path.
Single Stage to Orbit
The administration at Equestrian Aerospace had a plan, to get to space using a plane, a spaceplane to be exact. A spaceplane was not a normal type of plane, it was a plane that is able to get into space, hence its name. They built this spaceplane because waiting for an optimal moon encounter would take a long time.
The spaceplane hanger was ready to deploy the Aeris 4A, a spaceplane that would get into orbit if flown correctly. The spaceplane was designed by Equestria's finest engineers, using parts from Planetshine's C7 Aerospace company. It had front AV-R8 winglets as canards, 2 ramjet engines, a toroidal aerospike engine and RCS as a cherry on top for docking with something like a space station.
The pilot for this mission was Lyra. Lyra would make a better pilot for this mission, not because Planetshine wasn't at the space center, but instead, she had flown a plane before. Her knowledge of flying a plane was better than anypony else, so the administration told her to fly the plane.
The plane taxied to the end of the runway, ready to take off. Lyra started up the throttle, the ramjet engines had a kick to them, accelerating the plane very quickly. She then pitched the plane up a little bit, and it flew. She then retracted the landing gear and then coasted along at about 500m above sea level to gain enough speed to pitch up and get to space.
Once she pitched up, she flattened the plane out and coasted along at about 10000m to gain even more speed until pitching up again to get to space. When the ramjet engines flamed out, the aerospike engine kicked in, getting her apoapsis above the Karman Line.
Once her apoapsis was above the Karman Line, she coasted along pointing prograde to reduce drag and waited for a while until her spaceplane was at its apoapsis. Once it was at apoapsis, she did a small prograde burn to get her into orbit. She was able to do a small prograde burn because her ascent was very efficient.
The spaceplane did one orbit before Lyra pointed her plane retrograde and did a small burn to get herself out of orbit and back to the space center. The retrograde burn only took a while, using only 100 delta-V out of her 400 delta-V remaining from her aerospike engine.
Once she entered the atmosphere, she started spinning her spaceplane to evenly distribute the heat. The cockpit she was in wasn't the best at heat resistance, and would only tolerate so much. The only problem now was that she was going to undershoot the space center's runway. She stopped her spinning once the spaceplane was at a safe speed and started to pitch the spaceplane up.
The spaceplane instantly went up and she then fired up the ramjet engines. She kept the throttle low and flew at a high altitude for a bit before gradually pitching down to land at the runway. The Aeris 4A had a very good glide ratio for what it was because of its delta wings. The wings provided enough lift for a 50m/s touchdown.
She touched down quite close to the start of the runway. The spaceplane landed very softly with a near zero vertical speed. Lyra slammed on the brakes and the spaceplane slowed down to a complete stop. After all that, the administration told her to taxi the spaceplane into the spaceplane hanger for some upgrades, such as better front canards and other things like that.
Planetshine, Bon Bon, and Luna reported to the launchpad, with the rocket waiting to launch. Bon Bon and Luna walked up the stairs to command pod while Planetshine flew up to the command pod. The rocket was extremely big, having 2 different side boosters staged in an onion stage. The two side boosters would feed fuel and oxidizer the main booster so that when the side boosters are decoupled, the main booster would be full.
The command pod wasn't that big, but it had ample room for sleeping and lying down. Planetshine was on the top level while Luna and Bon Bon sat together at the bottom level. The rocket was very large, though not as large as the Minmus rocket. The only thing that was larger was the transfer stage, which used a Wolfhound engine, which had high efficiency in a vacuum because of its very wide engine nozzle.
The lander would have a crew capacity of 2, which would house Planetshine and Luna as they land on the moon. Gene said, 'You ponies all good? We will be launching in 30 seconds.'
'All good,' Planetshine said.
Launching in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Liftoff!
The rocket had a pretty good TWR to start with, at 1.5, but once it started to have its fuel used, it quickly changed to over 2. The launch wasn't that uncomfortable. The ascent this time was a little different than other rockets. Instead of doing a gravity turn a bit late, Planetshine initiated the turn 2500m above sea level and then pointed the rocket in the prograde direction, slowly turning the rocket until horizontal.
Once the side boosters finished burning and the fuel was fully depleted from them, Planetshine decoupled them leaving only the main booster that would get it into orbit. The decoupling had a bit of a problem, as in a lot of problems, such as the Seperatrons not firing up, which meant the side boosters collided with the main booster, but nothing bad happened such as breaking the engine of the main stage, which would be disastrous.
Once the apoapsis reached 75000m above sea level, Planetshine stopped the main booster, and still pointing prograde, coasted all the way to the rocket's apoapsis. Then, once the rocket reached its apoapsis, Planetshine burnt along the prograde vector to get into a stable orbit around Equestria.
Author's Note
I promise next chapter is going to be long, just trust me.
Planetshine deployed the fairings and then the ponies in the command pod could see into outer space. 'Princess Luna, look out the window, you can see Equestria down there,' Planetshine said, looking out the small window on her left. Princess Luna glanced out the window, amazed at the scale of Equestria from orbit.
'Is that really Equestria, because when I was on the moon for that 1000 years, Equestria looked so small from there, but why does it look so big from here?' she asked.
'Because we are nowhere near the moon.'
'Really?'
'Pfft, yeah, obviously.'
Luna was confused, even though she was in space, she was so far away from the moon. Planetshine wasn't though, as she had been to Minmus before. 'Mission control, do you hear me, when is the transfer to the moon going to start?' Planetshine asked.
Gene replied, 'It will be in about 30 minutes.'
'Mkay,' Planetshine replied, 'I'll check on my map.'
Planetshine checked on her map, looking at the trajectory of the rocket. The manoeuver was one that would put the three ponies on a free return trajectory back to Equestria, which was a pretty neat trick that would save them if an engine broke or something devastating like that.
After waiting a long 30 minutes to the manoeuver, Planetshine fired up her booster, which had a Terrier engine, not the best at TWR, but it was pretty efficient when in outer space, having over 3000 delta-V with only a little bit of fuel in the Rockomax fuel tank. The burn took about 2 minutes of pure burning to get to the moon with a free return trajectory as a cherry on top.
Once the transfer was complete, the ponies in the command pod relaxed, and since Planetshine was a bit hungry after the hectic launch with some bad separations and things like that, she took out the snacks and started to do recreational snacking to pass the time while the other two ponies just talked for a while together. Planetshine then insisted to go on an EVA, something that the other two ponies shouldn't do as they have never used a jetpack to manoeuver around in space.
Planetshine opened the door of the command pod once she put on her spacesuit. Since the top part of the command pod also acted as an airlock for the ponies in the bottom part of the command pod, Bon Bon and Luna weren't affected by Planetshine opening the door. She jetpacked around the lander, which was also the transfer stage. After flying around, checking the lander for any problems, such as broken landing legs.
Once she finished doing her check around the lander, she jetpacked over to one of the windows on the bottom level of the command pod, specifically, Luna's side. She looked in the window of the command pod, and Bon Bon saw her peeking into the command pod. Once Luna realised that Planetshine was looking into the command pod, she freaked out a bit. 'Planetshine!' she said, 'What are you doing?'
'Oh, nothing,' she replied, 'Let me get back into the command pod, just wait a minute or so.'
Planetshine got back into the command pod, taking off her spacesuit once the air was pressurised in her section of the command pod. Then, Bon Bon wanted to have a spacewalk, but Planetshine insisted that she would do it when they were on the moon, as the jetpacks they had would have more than enough TWR to get off the surface of it.
The two ponies were disappointed with what Planetshine said, but they also thought it was somewhat reasonable as they had no EVA training in space. Luna was able to teleport, but then the magic scanners built into the command pod said there was absolutely no magic to be found in space, but it still worked in the command pod.
Having magic in the command pod but not in outer space was very weird to even think about, but it was definitely the case with Princess Luna. Perhaps it only works when a pony is surrounded by air, perhaps the magic scanners were giving wrong information.
Planetshine was the first pony to bust out the snacks and the food, but then the other two ponies in the command pod also asked for some food as they were a bit hungry. There were only really a few choices of meals while in flight in space as food will just fly away everywhere because there was no such thing as gravity when something is orbiting around something else.
The meals were carrots with hay, apples with bread, and cupcakes. Princess Luna chose the cupcakes as she liked eating them, while Bon Bon ate carrots and hay and Planetshine eating snacks instead of apples with bread. She kept the snacks a secret so that nopony else would eat them so she could have all the snacks she wanted.
After eating, the ponies would then get some rest, so they would be awake while going on the Lunar surface, Planetshine and Princess Luna that is. All three ponies took a nap, as the moon would approach in about 30 minutes.
Author's Note
I know it's short, but that's because of very reasonable reasons. (might add more into this)
But here is something.
Bon Bon was the first one to wake up from the nap, then it was Princess Luna. Planetshine was still fast asleep in her part of the command pod. Bon Bon looked out the window and realised that the moon was very close to them and that they entered its sphere of influence. She then looked on her little map, and it said the injection burn on the moon would be in 10 minutes. 'Phew, at least we didn't pass the injection manoeuver, that would be just disastrous,' she said.
Once she checked the map and did some science experiments, she called Planetshine to wake up. Even though she wasn't a scientist, the command pod can store all the data from the experiments for recovery, a scientist can observe it and give more information about the experiments, so that means that they could know more about a particular celestial body or interplanetary space.
'Planetshine, Planetshine, PLANETSHINE! WAKE UP!' Bon Bon shouted at her.
Planetshine finally woke up after a while of Bon Bon shouting at her extremely loudly. Once she woke up, she questioned, 'Where are we?'
Luna responded this time instead of Bon Bon, 'You might want to look outside.'
Planetshine looked outside out of the window on her right. The moon looked very close to her, and that was that is very close to her, but Equestria looked very small. 'Wow, that looks pretty large, and Equestria looks like a ball or something like that,' she said.
They waited for a while, Bon Bon and Luna each sharing an apple while Planetshine was just snacking on the mountain of her own snacks, cleverly hidden in a monopropellant tank, which was empty as it was basically useless for that mission. Once they were a little bit away from the manoeuver node, Planetshine fired up the little Terrier engine to complete the injection burn to put them into a stable orbit around the moon.
Planetshine then did a little EVA to take a few photos just for the sake of it. Once she was out of the command pod, she pulled out her camera, and almost slipping out of her hooves, took a few photos of the moon and the lander orbiting the moon in all its glory.
Once she was all done with the pictures and all that, she transferred the photos to the ponies at the space center. Then, they asked for a selfie with all three ponies on the mission. She climbed down into the bottom level of the command pod, which was very cramped when she got in and took a selfie with all three ponies squished together.
Once she finally sent the photo to the space center for every pony to see, she decided a place to land and started to turn the lander retrograde so they could land on the east far side crater, the one that was partially visible from Equestria at night.
Once she was on a trajectory that would land where she wanted to, she let the lander coast along in space above the moon, waiting for the perfect time to do her suicide burn, which actually happened to be pretty early. She started her suicide burn as late as possible, aiming to have 0m/s about 1m above the ground. It was a very dangerous manoeuver, but she pulled it off flawlessly as she was a great mathematician as well as a pilot.
Once they landed very softly, trying to not overstress the landing legs from touching down, Planetshine told the other ponies to put on their spacesuits as they would step on the moon for the first time in Equestrian history. More than a thousand years ago, Luna was banished to the moon, but what she told the other ponies, she actually didn't step hooves on the moon, she was just banished there, with a mark on the moon as her physical body and spirit.
Planetshine was the first one to put on her spacesuit and was also the first one to jump out and step on the moon's surface. Bon Bon was helping Luna put on her spacesuit, so she took a little time to get out of the lander. Luna was last, as she had to get a bit used to wearing a spacesuit, and after about 2 minutes, she jumped out of the lander, and then she realised something, the gravity was lower than the surface of Equestria.
Planetshine then went into the lander to do a quick gravity scan while the others were just standing outside, waiting for Planetshine. Once she was complete, she concluded that the gravity on the moon is about 1/6 of what they would find on Equestria. She then posed for a few photos, even doing a selfie with all three ponies. Their visors made it hard to distinguish which pony was which, but their spacesuits were all made differently, so it was pretty obvious which pony was which.
Once they were done with the photos, surface samples, experiments, flag planting, footprints and some jetpack training for Bon Bon and Luna, they were now about to head off back home. Luna was the first one to get into the lander, next was Bon Bon, and the last one was Planetshine, who said that she would look at the moonscape for a little bit longer. They then all took off their spacesuits except for Planetshine, who wasn't bothered to.
Once all the ponies were in the lander, they were ready to take off, but Planetshine realised that they had more than enough delta-V to get to somewhere else on the moon, and so they did, even if they weren't supposed to. Once Gene heard the news about the extra delta-V and another landing, he thought to himself for a while. After a quick while of thinking, he agreed that they should do another landing somewhere on the moon, as it would make the mission seem more impressive.
'Mission control, can you hear me,' Planetshine said through the radio in her part of the command pod.
'Loud and clear Planetshine,' Gene replied.
'Just saying, but this mission might take a bit longer than expected, every pony on board including me wants to stay on the moon for a longer time, like a lot longer.'
'Well, you can, but the only problem is food and water, do you have enough to last however long you want to be on the moon?'
'Yeah, should be enough to feed all of us for about 3 days or so, and going back home only takes about a day or so of coasting in space.'
'Very well, you may stay longer on the moon, just don't get stranded or anything bad like that ok?'
'Ok.'
All the ponies in the lander were very happy, especially Planetshine, who wanted to see the moonscape for a lot longer because it had beautiful formations. The first stop and only other stop on the moon was the edge of the farside crater, which looked like a nice place to find a good view of the surrounding moonscape.
Planetshine jumped out of the command pod first while the other two were putting on their spacesuits again because they took them off when they went in the lander. Planetshine planted another flag while Bon Bon was doing some experiments in the lander and Luna struggling to put on her spacesuit.
'Bon Bon, Luna,' Planetshine called to them via the microphone in her spacesuit, 'You guys have to come out here, the view of the crater looks so beautiful from here, like seriously.'
'Alright Planetshine,' Luna said, 'I'm coming out, Bon Bon's doing some experiments so she is going to take a bit longer.'
'Mkay, you say so.'
Luna jumped out of the lander, looking around after landing on her hooves. Bon Bon was the next one to come out, but when she finally got out, she was amazed by the moonscape. After a while, the three ponies were getting a little bored with looking in one direction, and so they turned to another direction and gazed at it for a little while.
Once they were done with gazing into the moonscape, Bon Bon went to check the lander if there were any problems with it while Luna and Planetshine were just playing around jumping and jetpacking around the lander. Bon Bon later joined the 2 ponies at jetpacking around the lander. Once they were done with playing around with the jetpacks, Planetshine insisted on going on a little expedition.
Bon Bon and Luna agreed to join the expedition, and so they followed Planetshine. The destination was a hill about a kilometer away, which wasn't very high, but it definitely would give a great view of the moonscape. Once they finished jetpacking over to the hill and landing, Planetshine realised that she had barely any EVA propellent, which was a huge bummer because it meant she had to walk back to the lander. Bon Bon's EVA propellent was also mostly depleted, and so was Luna's.
'Uhh, guys,' Planetshine called out to them, 'Since we don't have pretty much any jetpack fuel, we need to walk back to the lander.'
The other ponies were disappointed that they had to walk over to the lander which was about a kilometer away, but it was their only way to get back home. Then, out of nowhere, Planetshine said, 'Don't worry everypony, the spacesuits don't restrict much movement so you guys can walk on the moon just like you would back home, other than the gravity being one-sixth of Equestria.'
They gazed at the moonscape for a while, and when they finished that, they were ready to hike back to the lander, spend the night there, and get back home.
Author's Note
Just to make this clear.
Planetshine: Space Explorer / Pilot
Planetshine yelled at the other ponies, 'When are we going back home, I'm getting a bit moonsick.'
Bon Bon was also getting a bit moonsick, but Luna wasn't, she loved the moon as she was the princess of the moon. 'Me too,' Bon Bon replied, 'We should get going back home.'
'Ehh, I guess we should get going, I like this place, but if you guys want to go, then I think we should go,' Luna said.
'Great,' Planetshine replied to Luna, 'Firing engines in 3, 2, 1.'
The Terrier engine had more than enough TWR to get into a lunar orbit and get back home with about an extra 100m/s delta-V to spare, just in case there was an error with the calculations and they had to do extra burns to get back home. Planetshine thought that it was a little to overengineered, but she thought it was pretty reasonable because these things can happen, and it’s always better to be prepared to face any problems.
Once they lifted off, Planetshine decided that a low pas of the edge of a ledge would be a great way to scare off the other two ponies, especially Luna. Planetshine had to fine tune the low pass a lot of times, as one small error would make the low pass not low enough or it could crash into the Lunar surface, which would mean that the ponies would get stranded on the surface of the moon, which would be extremely disastrous.
Once the fine-tuning was all complete, Planetshine let the lander coast along. The other ponies didn't know about this extremely dangerous stunt and felt relaxed that they would get home, but Planetshine was double checking the trajectory so that nopony would get stranded on the moon.
The lander coasted along the space above the moon, the ponies waiting for the low pass. Bon Bon was the first pony to realise that the lander would go on a low pass, but to her, it was more like it would smash into the ledge. She started to panic, which grabbed Luna's attention. She also got worried and started panicking too.
'Planetshine, make the lander go up higher, we are going to smash into that ledge over there, Planetshine!' Luna yelled.
Planetshine instead of listening, she ignored even Luna shouting at her and her orders, which was something that nopony dared to do, except Planetshine. Luna and Bon Bon screamed at Planetshine and begged her to try to clear the ledge, but Planetshine ignored them and instead turned the lander radial out and pretended to do something.
Once the lander was right near the ledge, Planetshine turned the lander prograde to give more clearance, and the lander just missed the ledge, its scanners detecting that the lander was just a bit more than 1m away from the surface. Once that was complete, Planetshine said to the other ponies, which were extremely relieved that they didn't crash, 'Princess Luna, Bon Bon, did you like it?'
'That was amazing but scary though, Luna is still shivering from that. How did you pull that off?' Bon Bon replied.
'Oh, it's actually pretty simple, just calculate it, plus, it passed closer than I expected it to, just a bit more than 1m.'
'Nice, I can never pull that off ever in my whole life.'
The lander's apoapsis was about 30000m above the moon's surface which meant that they wouldn't be crashing into the surface anymore. Once it reached its apoapsis, Planetshine performed a good old circularisation burn. Once the circularisation burn was complete, all three ponies went on a spacewalk.
Planetshine was the first one to get out of the lander, Bon Bon next and Luna last. They then took a few selfies with the camera they had, and kept onto that photo, sending it to the astronaut complex as well. 'Let's get back into the lander which is in orbit and is not really a lander now that I think of it.'
Once the ponies entered the lander, Planetshine initiated the engines again, this time accelerating to lunar escape velocity so that they could get back home. The lander's TWR was pretty high compared to when it started, so the burn only took a short time.
The burn was finally completed, and all the ponies in the command pod were getting hungry, and there was a limited amount of food stored in the command pod, so they had to sort out rations for themselves, but going back home only would take about an hour so it wasn't really a problem. Planetshine was also given a ration, but after eating it, she started doing more recreational snacking with the snacks stored in a monopropellant tank.
Planetshine chowed down the snacks, but she did leave some leftovers for reentry and after landing. The ponies then took a quick 45-minute nap to pass the time instead of just talking to each other to pass the time. This time, Planetshine thought it would be a good idea to squish into the bottom level of the command pod, which was definitely not the best idea.
After the squishy 45 minute nap, the lander was going to enter the atmosphere of Equestria. Planetshine had to get to her place in the command pod, but she stumbled a bit when she wanted to get on her level, but she managed to do it just in time. The lander's reentry velocity was about 3km/s, which meant that the other parts of the lander had to be decoupled in order for the ponies to survive.
Planetshine quickly decoupled the lander stage, and all that was left was the command pod. Once the lander stage hit about 40000m into the atmosphere, it instantly disintegrated, while the command pod was fine, the heat shield glowing white hot, but it was nothing for the heat shield, not even using one-quarter of ablator.
Once the command pod reached about 5000m, Planetshine deployed the Mk16 XL parachute attached on top of the command pod. Then, the ponies in the command pod waited for touchdown. The touchdown place was a bit unusual, it was in Cloudsdale, which was made of pure clouds, and things like command pods shouldn't be able to land on clouds.
Planetshine was the first one to jump out of the command pod. She was greeted by a lot of ponies from Cloudsdale, which were very excited to see her come back. Luna was casting a spell for Bon Bon to be able to walk on clouds. The next pony that jumped out was Bon Bon. Some of the pegasi were thinking how in Equestria an earth pony was able to walk on clouds.
The last one that jumped out was Luna. The ponies in Cloudsdate bowed to her and were extremely excited to see her. The administration at Equestrian Aerospace decided to recover the command pod so that they could study the heat shield. The heat shield could be glowing white hot, but it only used about 1/4 of ablator and how it could resist so much heat is a mystery to be solved.
Data gained: 102
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.
'Planetshine, Derpy, you ponies are up for the next space shuttle,' Gene said to them as he entered the astronaut complex, 'It's in 2 hours so you two should get going.'
Derpy didn't respond but Planetshine responded quite quickly, 'Alright, Gene, I'm putting on my orange suit, Derpy is still sleeping.'
Gene was a bit angry at Derpy from what Planetshine said, and ran into her room, shouting at her to wake her up. 'DERPY, WAKE UP, YOU ARE UP FOR A MISSION IN TWO HOURS, TWO HOURS!' he yelled at Derpy. Derpy woke up instantly and then asked Gene what was going on.
Gene had to explain the mission again to her, and then helped her put on her orange suit which she still had problems putting on. Planetshine then burst into the room without knocking, 'Gene, why is this a space shuttle mission again?'
'Because the shuttle itself is reusable and that it is much easier for us to do than an SSTO,' Gene answered.
Once Derpy finally put on her orange suit, Bon Bon also burst into the room and asked if she could go on the space shuttle mission too with Planetshine and Derpy. Gene, basically not thinking anything at all, said, 'There is one more seat, so why not.'
Bon Bon got extremely happy when she could fly in a space shuttle, something that has never ever been done before. 'Thank you, thank you so much!' she replied extremely happily.
Once all the ponies were done with the preparations, they were called to report to the launchpad. The three ponies this time got the luxury of a ride to the launchpad instead of trotting there because the space center was conducting research on rovers. The rover they rode was not particularly big, but it had enough space to hold all three ponies.
The rover wasn't very stable, and it looked like it would flip sometimes, but it didn't, at least for now. Once they were at the launchpad, Planetshine got off first, then Bon Bon and then Derpy. Derpy tripped when getting off and fell flat on her face, something that really hurt for her, but she was alright, only having a little bruise on her left cheek.
The ponies climbed the ladder that would get them onto the space shuttle, and then, they embarked on the space shuttle. Bon Bon had a few difficulties getting in her seat because she couldn't fly and that the shuttle was mounted vertically instead of horizontally, but she finally was able to get in after help from Planetshine.
Once they were finally in their seats, Bon Bon and Planetshine performed some checks to see if the shuttle's controls were all correct and functional, while Derpy was playing around in her seat, curiously looking at some switches that were mounted on the sides of her seat.
The shuttle was going to launch in 1 minute, and the ponies, finishing their checks, were waiting for their launch. It seemed like years for that 1 minute to pass, but soon, the engines of the shuttle and the SRBs were ignited. Planetshine throttled up the engines, and then the launch clamps unclamped the shuttle. This time, the shuttle contained a solar panel array, communication arm which also contained some habitation modules, and a docking arm.
The shuttle this time was lighter than the last time, which meant that it had a higher TWR, meaning that it would launch faster and get into orbit quicker, but it would only be a tiny bit faster. Once the clamps were all unclamped, Planetshine realised that the shuttle was not in the orientation that she liked it to be, so she turned it so that the gravity turn would make the shuttle be facing upside down.
The shuttle would be much more stable if it was facing upside down for the gravity turn, just like it would if it would be the right side up, but Planetshine thought it would be more fun to put it upside down. She initiated the gravity turn early, just like the last time she flew a space shuttle.
Once the SRBs were out of fuel, she quickly decoupled it, firing up the Sepratrons right before decoupling. When the SRBs were decoupled, she relaxed a while and made the shuttle's miniature computer point it in the prograde vector, gradually turning the shuttle until it was horizontal. When she was relaxing, she thought it would be a good time to eat some snacks, and took out some that she packed a few hours ago.
Once the apoapsis was at about the right height, Planetshine stopped the engines, and then let the shuttle coast along into space. Once she was near space, she set the other space shuttle cargo, the space station core, the target, and started to make a manoeuver to get there. The large fuel tank had enough delta-V to do a part of the burn, so she used it instead of wasting all the remaining fuel in it.
When the fuel tank's fuel was all gone, she decoupled it, sending it on a suborbital trajectory so that there were no orbital debris to be found. When she decoupled the fuel tank, she did the remaining 63m/s using the shuttle itself. The intersect with the previous shuttle's cargo, which was a space station core deployed by the exact same shuttle, was only about 30m apart, pretty good rendezvous.
Planetshine then let the shuttle coast along to its target, the space station core, which the ponies on board had to wait about 12 minutes for. Planetshine told the other two ponies that they could get out of their seats and go relax. Bon Bon got out some snacks and with Planetshine, ate together, talking about what they would be doing in their holiday when they finished this mission. Derpy, on the other hoof, was just lying on her chair, taking a nap.
After waiting that time, Bon Bon could see the space station core, and then Planetshine quickly fired up the engines of the shuttle to cancel out the 25m/s difference in speed. Once the difference in speed was at an absolute zero, Bon Bon told Derpy to wake up and then go on an EVA. Planetshine would stay in the shuttle taking a nap when the other ponies were assembling the space station with the shuttle's cargo.
Bon Bon opened up the cargo bay from outside while Derpy was playing around with her jetpack, having problems with coordination. The cargo bay this time was modified by a little bit from the last time, having smaller 1.25m wide Clamp-O-Trons instead of the senior versions, so that it could house all the cargo onboard, which had monopropellant tanks and RCS thrusters to top it all off.
Bon Bon then jetpacked over to Derpy and then helped her get back to the shuttle, ready to assemble the space shuttle. Bon Bon decoupled the solar arm from the cargo bay while Derpy decoupled the communications/habitation module. Derpy quickly docked her module while Bon Bon struggled a little bit. From Bon Bon's perspective, she thought that Derpy was born to do this.
She had a few hiccups here and there, but she finally finished with docking the solar arm to the core itself, while Derpy was trying to decouple the docking arm. She tried to decouple it, but she had a lot of difficulties in doing so, so Bon Bon helped her do it. Derpy then started to dock the docking arm to the space station core, quickly doing it in a very short amount of time, having a perfect alignment.
Now that the space station was all assembled, the ponies were ready to head back home. Bon Bon and Derpy went into the space shuttle, this time Bon Bon doing the airlock business instead of Derpy, who last time forgot to close the outside door before opening the airlock. 'Planetshine, Bon Bon called out, 'Done with the space station thing.'
'Done already? That was fast,' Planetshine replied, 'Oh well, now go back to your chairs and put on your seatbelts, time to go back home.'
The space shuttle was in a pretty optimal place to do a retrograde burn to get back to the space center, so Planetshine initiated the engines. Once they were done the engine burning, they coasted along space until they were below the Karman line, which Planetshine tilted the nose of the shuttle 40 degrees up.
When the shuttle entered the thicker parts was where the air resistance really kicked in, slowing down the shuttle immensely, so much that Planetshine was going to undershoot the space center. She then angled the space shuttle to the prograde direction to reduce drag and gain some speed, so that she could try to glide all the way to the space center.
She tried to pitch up the nose to glide a bit, but soon she realised that she didn't have enough speed to glide all the way back to the space center, so instead of gliding all the way, she activated the shuttle's turbofan engine. The turbofan engine proved to be an extremely useful utility, being able to correct any pilot error when landing.
Planetshine had to do some adjustments, as she wasn't perfectly aligned with the runway, but other than that, it was all good. She then landed it quite softly, deploying the drogue chute upon touchdown and turning on the brakes on the wheels.
Once the shuttle landed, they were greeted only with the other astronauts instead of everypony in the space center. Now that the mission was complete and the space station assembled, there was only one thing to do, and that was to have ponies live in the space station, performing research and studying outer space.
Planetshine was out in Ponyville, trying to get ponies to volunteer to go on the space station for research and whatnot. She had found six different creatures, one of them a pony. They were quick graduates from the school of friendship, graduating in a few months after their first day over there.
As they all were curious about what is outside of Equestria and more, they agreed to be astronauts, which meant they would go outside of Equestria, a long way out of Equestria. Planetshine invited them to go to the space center for a tour, and report to the administration and sign up to be real astronauts that would actually go into space.
The 5 creatures and 1 pony boarded the Friendship Express to Canterlot, which they will then walk to the space center. 'It's a long walk, but we will get there,' Planetshine said.
'We can fly instead,' Silverstream replied.'
'What about Yona and Sandbar?' Planetshine asked.
'Let's just walk instead, we can talk about things for the time being,' Sandbar responded.
Once they finally walked over to the space center, which was only a 15-minute walk from Canterlot, Planetshine walked into the administration building, telling the others to stay outside. Once Planetshine told the administration building about the 6 other 'astronauts,' she welcomed them into the administration building. From there, they signed a few pieces of paper and an agreement that they were willing to go to places outside of Equestria, way out of Equestria.
Once they finished signing the papers, they were officially astronauts. Now they just had to do training, which would be one of the hard parts of being an astronaut. Training included medical training, basic science knowledge, jetpack training, and learning how to fly planes and spacecraft and more. All of which was done throughout one week.
Equestrian Aerospace declared them as the young six, being newbie astronauts and being young in general compared to the others. The first thing they had to do was medical training, as it was one of the most important things, as astronauts didn't need to fly spacecraft. They learned quickly, as pretty much every pony would, but that was only basic medical training, nothing like what doctors would.
The next thing they had to do was EVA training. The young six had to put on spacesuits and then they had to go in the space center's pool located just outside the administration building. The pool was pretty deep, at about 3m, but wearing a spacesuit meant that everyone was going to be fine. The spacesuits used were a bit different from the ones used in outer space. The ones used for training didn't have any jetpacks, which was pretty much useless because there were pretty much weightless up in space.
Next, the had to do jetpack training, which they had to use simulators to do, as emulating microgravity in a place that there was gravity was nearly impossible, unless they were in a plane that was falling from the sky. All of them had hiccups doing it on their first try, but once they got the hang of it, it got easier and easier.
Then they had to do learn basic science knowledge. This was the part they all hated, except Silverstream and Yona, which they were sort of ok with. They had to learn how to do the experiments, do basic observations, and learn how to transmit them or store them. Silverstream was the one that focused on it, as she was pretty interested in it after a little while of learning it. Plus they would also learn about orbital mechanics and orbital rendezvous and docking.
After that, they had to learn how to withstand high G forces. They were spun in a centrifuge that would simulate higher gravities than normal 1G. They started at 1.2G, and they would work their way up and up, the target was withstanding over 5G and over 10G for short bursts of time, as sometimes, that would happen during reentry. Once they were finished with all that, they would rest for the rest of the day, usually for the remainder of the day as training would last only about 2 hours.
For the 6th day of training, they would have to learn how to fly planes and spacecraft, planes being new as spaceplanes exist now after C7 constructed a single stage to orbit spaceplane. They would start out on flying spacecraft in simulators, but then after that, they would start to fly normal planes just to get used to the controls that they would face when flying spaceplanes or rockets. The next day would just be a day of pure relaxation as they had endured 6 days of training and only a little bit of rest.
The training program would last one month, and once that was complete, they would pick what they would be, a pilot, an engineer, or a scientist. When all the young six finished the basic training, which Gallus and Smoulder nearly quitted, they were able to pick what they would be. Gallus and Sandbar, pilots, Smoulder and Ocellus, engineers, and Silverstream and Yona, scientists.
They now just had to do 1 month of extra training with courses detailing the different things. All of them didn't want to do it, but they all needed to do it unless they didn't want to go into outer space and to places like the moon or other planets, so they did it. Once all that training was complete, they all did the test that would make them real astronauts, but if they fail them, they would be rejected as astronauts unless they did more training. Thank goodness for the young six, they all passed the test, and now they are all astronauts.
Author's Note
I think I might rewrite this, I just don't think this chapter is good enough in some parts.
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.
'2 hours to go, I'm so bored!' Planetshine complained. All the other ponies were not as bored as her. She was extremely excited for the Duna mission, but the others were not as excited, as they didn't discover it, it was Planetshine that discovered it, not to mention Dr. Whooves.
The Duna transfer window was nearly there, with a phase angle of about 45 degrees ahead of Equestria. All the astronauts waited for a long time, just because a transfer window wouldn't appear after that amount of time, with a phase angle of about 45 degrees.
Once that long and boring wait finally ended, they were called to the launchpad, which had a huge rocket that contained 4 side boosters and 8 Mastadon engines in the middle. The other stage was a nuclear stage, which didn't have a very high TWR, but was efficient, very efficient, at 800 ISP instead of the usual 300-400 ISP of the other engines. That stage itself had more than 5000m/s delta-V, which was more than enough to do a mission to Duna, as calculated by Wernher himself.
The ponies boarded the rocket, Planetshine Lyra in the Mk1-3 command pod and the others in the hitchhiker storage container, another great invention from Planetshine's junkyard. The hitchhiker storage container acted as a cryogenic stasis chamber, for use with long-haul missions, ones that would take more than 1 month or so.
All that was encased in a fairing, which also contained a rover. The rover was supposed to be a mobile base that was self-sustaining, with capacity for 6 ponies. It also contained drills and an ISRU, meaning it could refuel itself so that the fuel cells would last for basically forever, but there were solar panels and an RTG just for emergencies.
When the wait for launch was over, Planetshine started the engines, and the countdown started. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and we have liftoff! The launch clamps unclamped the massive rocket and since it had 4 side boosters which had Mammoth engines clusters, which had 4000kN of thrust in them, it shot into the air pretty quickly. The TWR of the rocket was about 1.96, making it one of the highest TWR rockets made by Equestrian Aerospace.
Planetshine started the gravity turn nearly instantly, as the rocket was very aerodynamic mostly because of the fairing. The 4 boosters were configured in a new staging method, using something called asparagus staging. Asparagus staging was a new experimental type of staging, which was like onion staging but more complicated. Two boosters would feed the other two boosters and those two would feed the middle stage, meaning that when two of the boosters decoupled, the other two would be full of fuel, and then when those two decoupled, the middle stage would be full.
When Planetshine started the gravity turn, she just pointed the rocket prograde, relaxing until two of the side boosters were drained of fuel. Then, she decoupled them, firing up the Separatrons, the boosters falling away to the ground. Planetshine then shut down the engines once the apoapsis reached above the Karman line, and let the rocket coast all the way up, decoupling the other two side boosters.
The 5 booster cluster proved to itself that it was extremely efficient in ascending from Equestria, placing the apoapsis above the atmosphere using only the fuel in the side boosters. The next thing for Planetshine to do was to deploy the fairing and start the circularisation burn at its apoapsis.
Once she did all that, mission control planned a manoeuver that would get her all the way to Duna. The burn would take one huge burn to complete, and it would use up a chunk of fuel. The ponies after the transfer was done, would go into their stasis chambers, which were tested dozens of times just in case something went wrong. There also had to be one pony that was not in stasis, as that pony would keep watch of the ship, just in case something bad happened.
The ponies started eating their meals, and then Lyra started the ejection burn, which took about a minute to complete but would get them on a rough encounter with Duna, not a precise one. The plan was to do a course correction close to Duna so that the periapsis would be placed pretty far under the atmosphere, as it was theorised that Duna had an extremely thin atmosphere compared to Equestria.
Finishing the ejection burn, everypony except Dr. Whooves went down to the hitchhiker storage container, and went into their cryogenic pods, ready to be put into stasis for the next few months during their transfer to Duna. Dr. Whooves relaxed in the command pod, doing some experiments and other things like that.
Author's Note
Duna will be the last part of this story, time for the sequel after finishing this part, which is going to have 3 chapters.
Dr. Whooves was getting bored, with nopony to talk to, he was going to get insane. He busted into the hitchhiker storage container and unfroze everypony from their stasis chambers. The ponies woke up pretty slowly, all of them asking if they were at Duna or not. Dr. Whooves had to explain how he got extremely bored and how he lost his sanity.
The other ponies agreed to stay with him until they got all the way to Duna. There was enough food to last and that there was a greenhouse in the rover, meaning that if they got sunlight, they would be able to grow food, which meant that it could theoretically last forever. Other than the greenhouse, the rover had a huge storage for water and food, filling up 2 tanks that could last for months on end. The rover could sustain its oxygen supply by splitting up the carbon dioxide from Duna's atmosphere and water could be found on the poles as ice.
The ponies then continued on their normal business every day, until one day, where a mid-course disaster struck.
'Planetshine,' Dr. Whooves called out, 'We have an asteroid coming our way, well, at least the sensors detect it, it's traveling towards us at 2km/s and it's going to smash into us in about 1 minute. It looks like it is a class A asteroid.'
'Turn the rocket sideways! Now!' Planetshine shouted, 'Don't forget to start burning in that direction.'
'It's not turning!'
'Let me try!'
Planetshine rushed into the command pod and started to turn the nuclear rocket to radial out, but the asteroid was traveling too fast. The asteroid hit a nuclear engine on the right corner, destroying it instantly, but at least it didn't hit the command pod or anything else on the ship. The ship then spun out of control, flinging it off trajectory, but the good thing was that it had more than enough fuel to do 10 course corrections.
Planetshine did a quick course correction that would put her on a crash course with Duna, only burning 3m/s. Once they were done with it, they just let the rocket coast along, not worrying about anything else.
Author's Note
The nuclear engine getting destroyed was because of the Kraken and not an asteroid in the game but in a story, it would be better if it was an asteroid.
'Everypony! Look out the window! I see Duna, at least I think I see it,' Lyra shouted, looking out the window.
'We have entered its SOI,' Dr. Whooves replied.
'2 hours and we will be there,' Planetshine said, 'At least that's to my calculations.'
The ponies on board had not realised Duna's moon, a huge moon compared to the size of the planet. The ponies then went on with their business, but they were excited, very excited to see Duna in all its glory. Planetshine then realised something, she shouldn't have put it on a collision course, so she burnt a little bit radial out so that it wouldn't smash into the surface, meaning that there was a chance that they could try again to land.
Once the two hours were over, they were right above the atmosphere, the planet looked huge from where they were, just like the moons of Equestria. The planet wasn't all that red, but reddish orange with a bit of darker patches which were most likely geographical features, such as canyons or craters.
The ship entered Duna's atmosphere for the first time, Dr. Whooves starting to do experiments to see the properties of Duna's atmosphere. Planetshine was just relaxing in the command pod, making the ship point in the retrograde vector. The ship started to heat up, but didn't heat up much, the atmosphere, even though very thin compared to Equestria's, did a very good job of slowing the craft down.
The deceleration was over 2Gs, but everypony was able to handle it, after all, they needed to handle 15G for short bursts. Then, once the craft was at a slow enough speed, Planetshine deployed the radially mounted parachutes on the fuel tanks near the top. There were 10 parachutes in total, making it so that the craft descended slowly, but it wasn't slow enough to land on its landing legs.
Once the craft nearly reached the ground, traveling at over 15m/s, enough to bust the landing legs, Planetshine gave a burst of the nuclear engines. The nuclear engines, even though having low TWR and had lost efficiency due to the atmosphere, had just over 1 TWR, so that slowed it down enough to not break the landing. The burn had to be done quite a bit earlier than it would have needed to be, that was because the craft had a nuclear engine destroyed and that the one on the other side had to be shut off.
Once the craft finally touched down, the parachutes dropped all on the ground in a mess and the ladders were deployed. Planetshine was the first one to bust out the door, already in her spacesuit. The atmosphere from Dr. Whooves scan was 96% carbon dioxide, which was very bad and was not very thick, almost like a half vacuum, meaning that a spacesuit might be necessary, though a high altitude flight suit and a breathing mask could be possible.
Planetshine landed on the ground with no problem at all. She then planted a flag down, still being the first pony to set hoof on other celestial bodies and planting flags on them. The next thing was all the other ponies went out, one by one until all 5 were out. Planetshine then went into the command pod and then decoupled the rover which was sitting on the side of the rocket. The rover bounced a bit on contact with the surface but that was due to the lower gravity of Duna.
The ponies then went in the rover, and the rover having accommodation for 6 ponies, they didn't have any problems with finding a plave to be in. Planetshine and Lyra in the Mk2 inline cockpit, which was actually made for planes and the others in the Mk1 crew cabins, which were also made for planes.
She then decoupled a little probe from the little docking port on the rover, which Planetshine remotely controlled to land near the rocket to act as a relay. The probe landed gracefully at a very low speed and stayed there unless a dust storm blew it away. Planetshine then started up the electric wheels of the rover and started to head north.
Author's Note
Mind the inconsistency of saying rocket, ship or craft, it's just me being me.
The End
I am playing in science mode with mods. If you want to see all the mods I use, here it is. Other than that, the save file will need all these mods to work. Anyways, I was too lazy to specify what mods in a list so I just did a screenshot of my gamedata folder.
Author's Note
note: the veterans are Planetshine (my oc) (jeb), Dr Whooves (bob), derpy (bill) and lyra (val)
Solid Rockets
'Planetshine,' Gene said, 'Are you done with all the safety checks?'
'Yep, everything is all good,' replied Planetshine.
Launching in 3, 2, 1, Liftoff!
The rocket flew up very fast, breaking the speed of sound in a matter of seconds, shooting up into the sky. 'Planetshine, observe the mystery goo, just do it now, or it'll be too late!' Gene said.
Planetshine activated the goo and observed it, it seemed to jiggle like it would usually be. Once she was up in the sky, she toggled the other mystery goo container and did a crew report. The rocket dropped down slowly at first, but accelerated quickly, mostly because of the aerodynamics of her ship.
She deployed the parachute after she finished everything. 'Alright, I should be all good now, I'm going to just relax and wait until this thing falls into the ocean.' she said.
The ship splashed down in the water after a few seconds of falling. 'Alright Planetshine, we will send some transponders to retrieve you, but you have to wait a bit of time.' Gene said.
'Alright, Gene.' Planetshine replied.
Gained 12.0 data
After Equestrian Aerospace had gone through a lot of researching, they were on their way to the moon. The moon was considered something as old as time. Princess Luna was the one who was responsible to control the moon.
Planetshine returned from holidays, eager for the moon mission. When she got back, she also had a chance to fly a plane, which she fell in love with. The moon mission was carefully planned out. The trajectory to get the ponies on the moon had to be perfect.
Bon Bon would be the pony that would go on this mission with Planetshine. Derpy was more of the engineer that liked to build things instead of flying them. Bon Bon wasn't considered new or anything because she was an official astronaut only a week after the other 4 astronauts.
Lyra was a bit disappointed that she wasn't picked for the mission, but Planetshine cheered her up with a hug. She then told Bon Bon to tell her everything that happened during the mission. The mission was planned out to have the lander dock with the transfer stage while in lunar orbit to have a lesser rate of failure than a direct ascent, and that the astronauts were pretty good at rendezvous and docking while in orbit.
Author's Note
I know this is a short chapter because I planned it to be something like an introduction to the moon.
PS: Luna is going to the moon as a tourist (I guess).
The princess of the moon, Luna, heard about everything that was going to happen in the mission. She then asked if she would be able to go to the moon as a tour. Equestrian Aerospace's administration had a small problem, there was going to be a tourist, Princess Luna to be exact. A princess, going to space and landing on the moon.
Now, Equestrian Aerospace had to get 3 ponies into space and onto the moon, but if they left Bon Bon out, they could always do a two pony mission, but a change of command pod would fix it all. The mission would be a direct ascent mission, as opposed to an Apollo-style mission, which was doing a rendezvous in orbit and getting the crew back while ditching the lander altogether.
*Fast forward to before launch*
Princess Luna arrived at the space center, ready to go into space. The administration told her that spacesuits were extremely important anywhere in space, even on the moon. Luna took their advice and went to the astronaut complex to greet Planetshine and Bon Bon. The two ponies welcomed Luna to the astronaut complex and then gave her a tour before boarding the rocket.
She looked around the astronaut complex, it contained the spacesuits used for the first spacewalk and the one used for the first Minmus EVA. Then, she entered the other parts of the astronaut complex, which was just living quarters, with entertainment and bedrooms.
Then, she got a full tour around the space center. She saw everything in the tracking station and mission control, but then the ponies realised that they had not enough time to have a tour of the research and development department, but it wasn't that interesting anyway.
The ponies were called to report to the launchpad to board the rocket, which was called the Lunar Express.
Author's Note
I wanted the next chapter to be the launch and getting into orbit.
After months of planning, Equestrian Aerospace was finally done with planning for a mission to another planet. They planned to go to the planet Planetshine discovered, which was later named Duna by the Equestrian Astronomy Society.
The planet was estimated to have an SMA of 20726155264m, an orbit that's a bit eccentricity and a different inclination to that of Equestria's. It also had ice caps that looked like they were completely white and looked like it covered a huge chunk of land, meaning that it could have water before it dried up.
The ponies at Equestrian Aerospace had to plan the mission like nothing else before as one slight miscalculation even by 0.1 m/s would be a huge disaster. Duna also had an atmosphere, which meant parachutes worked and it also meant that they had to pack parachutes, which added mass which meant less delta-V for course corrections and burns.
Planetshine and the other astronauts were getting bored, they were all in Ponyville, their homes. They lived relatively close to each other, and they usually would rendezvous to discuss things about space and their mission to Duna.
In one of their rendezvous, quite close to the mission date of the Duna mission, the administration informed them that every astronaut would be going to Duna. This made everypony extremely happy, especially Derpy and Lyra, who both haven’t set hooves on other celestial bodies.
Firstly, they had to get the other six astronauts back from the space station, which had been their home for the past few months, doing research and other things like that, so Equestrian Aerospace had to send an SSTO that used remote guidance to bring them back, as they have been researching SSTOs lately, and have perfected one special design that was able to bring cargo and have space for 16 passengers.
