Planetshine's Space Odyssey Book 2

The time has come, well, at least the time has come for me to wake up from stasis after years in it. I put it on so that I would wake up when I was at Jool, not sure exactly why but hey, I had to see what it was like. I got out of the craft and into the main ship. Everything looked the same, but with no ponies of course. The others were in their cryogenic chambers, frozen until we reach Alpha Centauri.

I went back into the Galaxy Scouter and being the pony I am, I undocked it, turning off the magnets temporarily, and I flew it, or made it coast into space. The area around the Diver seemed ok, void of any asteroids which could hit. I saw a moon approaching. The moon was quite small but it didn't mean I wouldn't be exploring it. The Scouter had enough delta-V to do so and that it could always refuel via the big ship.

I started up the burn that would get me to the moon, putting the periapsis to have a low pass. The moon was supposedly called Bop, which had a pretty weak gravitational pull, and looked like the bigger brother of Gilly. There was no way to actually say that was the case but it could well be the case.

I tuned into some music when I was coasting along space to land on the moon, yes, I was going to land on it. The landing would mean I had to catch up on the Diver even more than if I was to do a flyby, but it would be well worth the extra burns and catching up. After exactly a few hours of coasting, I was near my periapsis, which meant I had to start doing my capture burn.

I started up the ion engines, and slowly, but eventually, got me into a stable orbit around Bop. From where I was, Bop looked like a huge asteroid, but the scatters on its surface wasn't as dense as Gilly's, and the gravity was much stronger. I started my retrograde burn to land, and after coasting along, I started a suicide burn to get me on the ground.

I finally landed after zero landing failures, doing a suicide burn that made me slide a little when I touched the ground. I didn't bother planting a flag but did bother going on an EVA. There was a very strange thing that was on my right, something greenish-yellow. The thing seemed very unnatural, so I went there to investigate it.

What I saw was absolutely shocking. The thing was a very strange thing indeed. It looked like a green giant squid, a lot like the fabled Kraken. The Kraken was some legendary sea creature that was later deemed fake, but on Bop, it didn't seem fake. I took a few photos and named it the Deep Space Kraken.

I then jetpacked over to my ship, ready to take off again as if I don't, it would be too late for me to catch up with the Diver. I started up the engines, ultimately accelerating to over 5000m/s to catch up with it in about 2 hours, not too shabby to say the least. I did some calculations for no absolute reason, trying to calculate the delta-V in the craft I was in. I turned the small screen in the cockpit, or service bay had and opened up the calculator. The little Scouter had a great little computer in it, but it wasn't touchscreen. The thing wasn't the best, but it was easy to use and easy to do things with.

I did some quick calculations, ok, it was only one calculation. Well, after I did the calculation, the delta-V total read more than 1 million, plenty for any journey, actually, excessive for even a full-on grand tour of the solar system, with landings that is. The immense amount of delta-V should be from the ion engines, at least that was what I thought it was from. The engines were extremely optimised, using low amounts of electricity and minimal amounts of xenon while providing 32kN of thrust. This wasn't very impressive, as the Scouter doesn't have a warp drive in it, which the Diver had.

The time taken to get to the Diver wasn't very long, but the deceleration took a while. I then realised something, the Diver wasn't going to leave the Joolian system until a few days, so that gave me some time to get to some other places. I transferred some liquid fuel manually via a fuel duct into the Scouter and headed off to somewhere that I found to be pretty sexy.

The place was supposedly called Laythe, an ocean world with oxygen, a bit like Equestria, but extremely cold compared to home. I undocked the Scouter again and fired up the engines to get to Laythe. The transfer would take a while, one day to be exact, but I was good with waiting, being the lazy one I was, I just went to sleep, not into stasis, my eyes barely able to open because of how tired I was.

After the long nap, which was definitely more like actually sleeping, I was still not at Laythe. I still needed about 3 hours to go, and I felt like tuning into some entertainment. The Scouter had an extremely powerful antenna, having a rating of over 1T, the Diver had one that was over 15T. The ground stations on Equestria had even more powerful ones but that would be upgraded sometimes. I watched some videos and played some games on another screen on the Scouter, which was basically a computer, nothing to do with control or anything.

I was finally at Laythe after a while of drifting in space. I entered its atmosphere after a bit of coasting, but when I reached it, I started to spin the craft like crazy, firstly to dissipate the heat and avoid getting burnt. The spinning made a huge difference, even though pretty much the whole craft was very heat resistant, also coated in a very heat resistant ablative material for reentry.

The Scouter reached the surface of Laythe after a long time of gliding in the upper atmosphere because of its very good glide ratio. The landing didn't go great, but it definitely was pretty good, not lying. I deployed a drogue chute to slow it down, and after a little, it came to a complete stop, but I did have to change the friction control on the wheels to keep it from moving down the dune I landed on.

I stepped out of the craft, looking out the ocean front view. I planted a flag and relaxed a bit, enjoying the view and also taking a few pictures and swimming. I landed pretty close to the water, so it was only like a 2-minute walk. I got back into the craft, ready to take off again. The takeoff process was like every other I did, and I got back to the Diver, docked with it, and then went into stasis to go to Alpha Centauri.