Author's Note

Because delta-V is important in this one and it was one of my best missions.

3.2t to Gilly

I woke up to the sunshine or light that shined through the water, and waking up, I realised I was still a seapony, still in Seaquestria, about to leave it to go back to Equestria. I swam up to Terramar, and Rainbowshine, Starry and Sia went up as well and swam onto land. Terramar then put his hoof on his necklace, which turned us all into ponies and him into a hippogriff.

We said thank you, and I realised something, the Gilly mission was tomorrow. I thought of it just then, as such perfect timing was very strange, almost to the point of being impossible, maybe it was just a coincidence, or it was a time traveler, there was just no explanation.

I thought of something, either spend the night at the space center for tomorrow's mission or to stay at Mount Aris and rush to the space center. I decided to play safe, which I never do at all, but I didn't want the administration yelling at me. The administration was rough on the outside but had golden hearts, but they would never show it, maybe other than Gus.

I flew to the space center, Starry and Rainbowshine following, Sia staying behind as she needed to perform at Mount Aris, wishing us a goodbye. It took a while to fly, but we finally got there. What I saw on the launchpad was a tiny rocket, about 3 times larger than me but extremely small compared to the other rockets Equestria Aerospace built. Maybe they were just tight on their budget, but that was hardly the case.

I was shocked at the rocket, pondering to myself if I was dreaming, how was I going to get to Gilly like that, it just didn't seem possible, but something like that could always be possible. The rocket had a single Panther engine for the ascent, with a Spark engine to get it into orbit. From what I have heard, it uses a new type of propulsion, ion propulsion.

Ion propulsion was a very new and experimental technology, having extremely high efficiency but having very low thrust, about 1kN, and runs on xenon gas and electricity. I walked over to the administration building, signing in and declaring I was ready for the next mission. Then Gus walked in and started to explain the mission to me.

He explained everything, even to the minute details of the moon I was going to land on, such as the gravity. From what he explained, the moon had almost to the point that there was no gravity and some information about the ion engines. They were very efficient in space and all that, but when they are in the atmosphere, their thrust goes down significantly, barely able to propel anything.

It was 8:50, and the launch was going to commence at 9 am. The loudspeakers called out, 'Planetshine, please report immediately to the launchpad.'

I knew I had to go right away, so I said farewell to my friends, then making my way over to the launchpad, ultimately boarding the tiny rocket. I waited for a while, doing checks and going in that small and not very luxurious command pod, which was basically a chair in a fairing that had a door. I was discouraged by the interior, but if this works, it would be a great step for all ponykind.

The launch counted down, my eyes shut, breathing in and out, calming down myself. I started up the Panther engine that would get me up, turning on the afterburner to build up speed, and the launch clamps unclamped the rocket. The rocket didn't have more than 1 TWR to get off the surface, but an initial boost meant that I could ascend with more than 1 TWR.

The rocket first accelerated slowly, but after a while, the Panther engine kicked in, accelerating me up to extreme speeds, also slowly doing a gravity turn just to gain horizontal speed as my rocket had very low aerodynamical drag. The rocket ran out of liquid fuel when it was traveling over 1200m/s, more than Mach 3 with an afterburning turbofan, I couldn't believe it.

I decoupled it, now only having a single Spark engine to accelerate me all the way to orbital velocity. The engine ran out of fuel when I was in a suborbital trajectory, but I could use the ion engine to get me all the way to orbit, as the burn would only take an all-time low of 10m/s because of my very horizontal ascent.

Now it was just time for me to wait until the burn that would get me to Gilly, which was very very complicated. The burn would make me have a gravity assist off of the moon, getting me on a trajectory to Eve, which I would aerobrake in so I could get into an orbit into it. From that point on, I would do a very small course correction to get to Gilly.

I started the burn when it was time to, splitting the burn into 3 burns at periapsis to maximise fuel usage, which was known as the Oberth effect. The burns took quite a while, but after doing the final one, I was on a trajectory to the moon. Just after the burn, I would have to fine tune it, and since it didn't have any autopilot, I had to do it all by myself, tweaking it for a long time instead of relaxing.

Now that I was on a trajectory to the moon and then onto Eve with a periapsis of 75000m, I was ready to go into stasis. There were no stasis chambers in the rocket, but instead, the command pod, which was a fairing, would be the stasis chamber. I know it sounds strange but the controls were built to withstand very low temperatures of space and stasis chambers. I went into stasis and set the time for when I would arrive at Eve.