Planetshine's Space Odyssey Book 1

'You have to be serious,' I complained, 'Why is this going to take so long again.'

I didn't like long waits. In fact, I hated them, but we had to get home. I thought to myself for a while, thinking about the speed of light. The speed of light was very fast, able to go to the moon in about 1 second, and reaching Duna in a possible time of just over 3 minutes.

The wait of getting back home really sucked, but at least I had my fellow astronauts, who were great companions and boredom killers. I was able to talk to them, but that was really only in a small space, which also fucking sucked. I've organised some things for the trip, such as going on EVAs for fun and whatnot.

'Everypony, listen up,' I called out, 'I will put this rocket into a collision course with Equestria.'

There was a 10m inflatable heat shield that would protect us, which I think was a better idea than the ablative ones, as they offer more protection. The others then went with their businesses while I went on a spacewalk for the sake of it. There weren't any other things to do, but I just had to do it, getting extremely bored.

From that point on, I did whatever I would usually do on a trip, lots of recreational snacking, exercising, whatever. 'Everypony, the window looks like it has a crack in it,' I heard Lyra say. That grabbed my attention and Dr. Whooves was the first one to respond.

'Show me,' He said.

Derpy smashed into the walls of the command pod, confused a bit, 'What's happening?'

Bon Bon then joined in the conversation, 'Where?'

I was the last one to join in, 'Fix it already.'

'How do we fix it?' Bon Bon asked.'

'Duct tape,' I replied.

'Where is it?' Dr. Whooves asked.

I facehoofed, 'Are you serious, you don't even know where it is? Ugh, let me do it.'

I grabbed the duct tape from the cupboard that stored some random but useful stuff. It was invented by the legendary Wernher Von Braun. It proved itself very good for sealing things up, even to stop leaks in a spacecraft, like broken windows. It used to be called space tape, but it proved useful in normal ponies' lives, so it was late named duct tape for some reason.

I could see the planet, and traveling at about 1000m/s when we entered the SOI. The sun orbital speed was about 10000m/s, but the orbital velocity difference was about 9000m/s so 1000m/s was the entering velocity of Equestria's SOI. I waited for a while, thinking of a good time to ditch the engines.

When we were at about 80000m, I ditched the engines and inflated the heat shield. When we entered the atmosphere, I waited for a while to see the reentry effects that were visible from the command pod. The engines disintegrated into thin air, but in this case, basically nothing. We were all fine, the heat shield shielding us from all the reentry heat.

The heat shield also slowed us down plenty, making us all endure 15Gs of deceleration for a while in the thicker atmosphere, but we could easily endure it. The heat shield then slowed us down enough to deploy the drogue chutes and then the parachutes.

There were 2 drogue chutes and 4 parachutes, which was plenty for any landing on Equestria. This time, we landed in the middle of nowhere, in a desert south of Equestria. I peeked out the window, nothing to be seen. 'We are sending transponders to pick you up,' Gene said through the radio.

It was a long wait to have the transponders arrive, but they arrived finally. We didn't have missions for a long time so we were given a long long holiday.