12-30-18 livewriting: CSP (Patreon)

Here's what got writ:

It had been all so clear in her mind. She would return to Horseton, console Cherry after that pink pony broke under the strain of running everything herself, give a few snappy orders and put everyone back to work. Chrysalis hadn’t even considered the possibility- the cold reality, really- that a space program that had functioned well enough without her to rescue three stranded astronauts could survive two additional weeks without her. 

Well, now she stared that reality in the face- or, rather, in the briefly-viewed pink flanks and yellow tail as the pony had dashed out the door. And she didn’t like how it looked, not one bit. 

One of the cardinal rules of being a queen, as Chrysalis understood it, was making oneself appear absolutely indispensable. Let on that your job could be done just as easily as the drunken hobo pony who shouted random nonsense, and you opened the door for your replacement. 

And now, after seven weeks of being sidelined (except for a week at the Hive undoing the five most stupid things Elytron had done in her absence), she found that not only had she revealed herself to be dispensable, but she’d lined up her own replacement in the process… and it wasn’t even a changeling. 

Well, that wouldn’t do, not at all. 

Chrysalis hadn’t noticed on the way in the absence of guards on the immediate entrance to her office / throne room. In fact, it took a moment to realize there had been only one guard on the main door to the administration building. That wasn’t good. The pony had either slipped up, or else she’d sent the changelings who were supposed to be there on other tasks. And even in the latter case it counted as a slip-up, because you NEVER sent away your last guard/flunky. You always kept one nearby you, so that other people knew you were important(342).

And right this moment, Chrysalis absolutely could not be seen as chasing Occupant down herself. That would be putting herself under his power. Recognizing his authority in Mission Control was one thing- that authority, after all, stemmed directly from herself, and everyling knew it. But outside the control room Occupant needed to be the one who came running when she called, and not the other way around- especially now, when she needed to re-establish her authority. 

So, without an escort, without anything other than her own glorious presence, Chrysalis stepped into the hallway and then out the front door. “Guard?” she asked- no, no, bad sign, she thought. “Where are the other guards who should be stationed around this building?”

The guard, snazzy in his peaked cap and pony-style security guard blouse, saluted smartly. “I’m it, my queen,” he said. “We have multiple tour groups today being escorted, plus there’s the barges due to arrive from Baltimare and Manehattan today that need unloading.”

Had Chrysalis been anyone other than Chrysalis, she might have admitted that these considerations were fair. But she was Chrysalis, and moreover she was in a bad mood growing worse by the moment. “Change of plans,” she growled. “I want two guards on each door of this building plus four for my office, understood? And I want someone to go fetch Occupant from whatever he’s doing and get him over here right this moment. I’m due a status report on our next mission.”

“Understood, ma’am!” the drone said, saluting smartly yet again. But, aside from the salute, he didn’t move a muscle.

Chrysalis waited patiently for what she thought was a more than fair amount of time to give the guard the opportunity to follow orders without prompting(343). “And when were you planning on doing what I ordered you to?” she asked, in a tone that indicated just how shaky the ground was under that guard’s hooves.

“As soon as I’m relieved, ma’am!” the guard said. “Can’t leave my post!”

Chrysalis glared a little harder. “I just gave you a direct order,” she snarled.

“Yes, ma’am!” the drone said eagerly. “But if I left now, this building would be totally unguarded! I did that last week when we had that fire on the launch pad, and Miss Berry, well, you know the language she uses sometimes!” 

Chrysalis drew herself up to her full height and a little extra, putting her fangs about a quarter-inch from the guard’s own muzzle. “And which of the two of us is the scarier,” she hissed. “A little pink earth pony… or me?”

“With respect, my queen,” the guard said, “it’s a choice between getting chewed out by you, or being chewed out by your AND Miss Berry. But don’t worry, I’ll see to it the paperwork for the guard roster and duty schedule is put on your desk the minute my relief-”

Chrysalis put a hoof on the guard’s muzzle. “Hold that thought,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

Two minutes later, the queen of the changelings had verified that, yes indeed, the single storage cocoon she’d had hidden in a closet was still there and still in usable condition. The pony hadn’t thrown it away.

Two minutes after that, it had a new tenant, his nice peaked cap floating just above his head, the shininess of his security badge dulled by the translucent gel of the cocoon. 

I’ll think of something suitable to do to him later, Chrysalis thought, as against her will she went wandering the space center in search of answers.

Footnotes:

(338) Who, Chrysalis expected, would be terribly relieved indeed. She’d been looking forward to that moment for the prior three days.

(339) Current top priority: new buildings for the research and development complex. Enhancements to the tracking station and the launch pad were also on the agenda, to be followed by a revamped air control tower with the newest in radios and magic rangefinding systems.

(340) Yet. In retrospect it bothered her a great deal.

(341) Chrysalis didn’t feel any better when she found out the word “mere” didn’t apply in the least to the amounts of money being waved at her subjects. But she did feel better once her still-loyal subjects reported to her on why, exactly, the ponies were paying so much. A certain number of them had decided to take advantage of the changeling lack of concern regarding legalities and moralities, and it didn’t take much after that to provide Chrysalis with a fresh new supply of blackmail for certain rich and influential “fine upstanding citizens”.

(342) The thought that Cherry Berry honestly didn’t care whether or not anyone else thought she was important was so alien to Chrysalis that even direct explanations of that fact didn’t register.

(343) Three point two seconds.

The four guard changelings dropped Occupant, none too gently, to the floor of Chrysalis’s office / throne room. “As you ordered, my queen,” the senior of the four rumbled. “With your permission, we’ll get back to our duties.”

“The four of you,” Chrysalis said, seated on her throne and doing her best to appear in control of things, “will remain here and wait on my pleasure. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the senior guard said, and all four saluted in the exact same way that the guard napping in the closet had. “And I’m sure nothing will happen to the supplies on the quay while they’re unguarded.” 

“And I’m sure no tourists will get into Building 7,” another guard said. “Besides, probably nobody will be using the vacuum chamber or the cryogenics testing facility today.”

“And the cows who live just outside the fence promised they wouldn’t eat our grass anymore,” a third guard said. “So no need to patrol the perimeter, right?”

“And-”

Chrysalis hissed the fourth guard into silence, then added, “The next changeling who thinks of some other thing more important than serving his or her queen will think again if they know what’s good for them!” Glaring at Occupant, she asked, “And what were you doing that required my guards to drag you over here?”

“Er… negotiating a large contract to put a satellite in orbit of Minmus,” Occupant said quietly. “You know… to make the trip pay for itself. Especially since we need a satellite in orbit there anyway, as a relay point for radio transmissions to control Mission R4.”

“How large?” Chrysalis asked. 

“Hm… about… carry the five… hmmm... “ Occupant counted on the holes in his hooves. “About sixty percent of the cost of the entire flight,” he finally said. “At least, that was their offer when I was, um, summoned.”

“How many actual bits?”

Occupant told her.

Chrysalis’s eyes went wide. “That’s more than the original mission control shac- I mean building cost!” she gasped. “Just how big is this rocket?”

“Um, really big,” Occupant said. “I don’t remember all the stuff Doctor von Brawn and the other bulls told me, but it was something like, “We need to get to orbit, and then we need that much again to get out to Minmus, slow down for orbit there, and land. And then we need a bit more to get off Minmus and back home, if everything works. And then add a satellite on top of that. So, um, it’s pretty big.”

“Don’t remember?” Chrysalis asked. “You’re being trained as a space scientist, Occupant. You’re supposed to know all of this!”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant said meekly. “But, well, it gets complicated really quickly. What we’re doing is sending a probe-controlled lander- made up exactly like what the real thing would be, except Cherry won’t be inside it this time.”

“And why won’t she be inside it?” Chrysalis asked. 

“Well… because we’re not sure any of it’s going to work,” Occupant said. “We were hoping the new generation rocket motors would be ready in time, but they’re not. Also, we’ve been experimenting on a sort of aerodynamic shell to go around the, um, the uneven, bumpy bits to reduce drag during liftoff. But we keep having failures with the release system. So we’re having to put together the Minmus mission with existing hardware… and… well, we’re not sure the existing hardware can do it.”

Chrysalis pressed for details, and bit by bit she got them. 

Assuming the interrupted negotiations were still on after this debriefing, Mission R4 would have two genuine contracts- the satellite launch and a temperature survey of the landing site and certain points in orbit around Minmus. In addition to that, the mission aimed to be not just the first mission to fly by or orbit Minmus, but the first to land under control and return to Equus. The overall delta-V required for the trip worked out to be over one and a half times the amount required for a simple orbital mission. 

But it wasn’t as simple as just throwing more boosters on the stack. Every drop of fuel you put on the lander had to be paid for with a massive amount more fuel in the first or second stages to get it to orbit. And since this launch had both the lander and the satellite- both loaded down with scientific equipment- that required even more fuel yet. And without the shell to make the satellite and lander aerodynamically smooth, the launch would go through fuel like a Manehattan rave party aficionado went through binkies. (344)

The end goal was to put a combined payload of nearly ten tons into Minmus orbit- that is, without touching any of the fuel in the lander. To put that in perspective, the largest orbiting vessel Chrysalis had piloted, the tourist special, came in just over tons counting fuel and engine, just to Equus orbit… and that stack was dangerously tall and wobbly during the first stage ascent. Mission R4 was putting more than twice as much weight a heck of a lot farther out than anything other than Mission R2 had ever gone. That meant its booster had to be, if Occupant’s numbers were right, four times as large as the tourist mission stack… 

… which meant four times as expensive.

And building a ship that big pushed the limits of what existing rocket engines and fuel systems could accomplish. It wasn’t a question of just adding boosters anymore, like the mixed set that had lifted Dragonfly’s bloated rescue ship to orbit. On this mission, the boosters would have to have boosters. And the more you did that, as Occupant understood it, the more you ran into the law of diminishing returns(345). Atmospheric drag became more of an issue. Three smaller tanks weighed more, and had more drag, than one big tank.

The aerodynamic shell, or “fairing” as George Cowley had named it, had been intended to help with that, at least around the payload. Had it worked, the rocket design would have used the next-generation fuel tanks that had been tested on Dragonfly’s flight plus a ton of Thud supplemental engines. Unfortunately, without the fairing, that design had been so inefficient that they’d never been able to get the package to even a Minmus fly-by without burning through the lander’s fuel tanks. 

So, while Goddard pushed like Tartarus to fix the final faults in the Skipper and Mainsail engines, the rest of the space program was working like mad to assembled what sounded to Chrysalis like the biggest kludge ever assembled by changeling or pony(346). Hence, everyone running around like a frightened pony who’d just drunk four cups of strong coffee. 

“All right, I get the basics,” Chrysalis said. “Have someone send me the details when you get a chance. And…” 

She practically had to bite her tongue to avoid saying What can I do to help? Queens did not offer help like eager schoolfillies. Queens gave orders and made decisions. 

But… all the decisions had already been made, hadn’t they? What was left for her to do?

“And… see to it that I get all the personnel reports that have no doubt been piling up in my absence,” Chrysalis finished, suppressing a sigh. “Now go conclude those negotiations. Since this one flight appears to be as expensive as every tourist flight we’ve flown combined, we might as well get some money back from it.”

Occupant saluted, turned around and walked out… followed by three of the four guards who had brought him. Only the senior guard remained, and even he kept looking back and forth between Occupant and Chrysalis, as if undecided about what to do.

This time Chrysalis did sigh. “Get them back here.”

And a moment later, “Not you, Occupant!”

Footnotes:

(344) Ravers who read this work will no doubt argue that wearing a binkie to a rave is “so last decade”. This is not the first time that Equestria is behind the times in comparison to other universes, and likely as not it won’t be the last. Just roll with it.

(345) This phrase was Chrysalis’s, not Occupant’s. Occupant referred to it as “not working as good as it should,” but Chrysalis was accustomed to situations where keeping up an infiltration guise for another week wouldn’t net the love it cost to maintain the transformation. 

(346) Considering some of CSP’s prior flights, this was not a claim to be made lightly.

Chrysalis definitely wasn’t chasing after Warner von Brawn. No, ma’am. Definitely not. She was inspecting her domain, as any ruler had a right to, and the fact that she was inspecting that part of it overseen by CSP’s top minotaur boffin was just one of those little coincidences.

“Ah, good evening, doctor!” she said as she stepped into von Brawn’s office. The bull, looking slightly less than his normally unruffled self, sat at a drafting table, examining blueprints. “And how do things proceed in your world?”

“With caution,” von Brawn rumbled. “For some reason the simulator keeps insisting that this rocket design will pitch up and flip during launch. And it doesn’t seem to matter which way we orient it- it always turns in the same direction. I can’t explain it, but it could spell a very expensive disaster for the mission if I can’t fix it.”

“I see,” lied Chrysalis. “Well, since you have the blueprints in front of me, why not walk me through the design?”

“I may as well,” von Brawn groaned. “I’m not making any real progress, anyway.” He pulled up an overall chart of the rocket. Just as Chrysalis had suspected, the thing didn’t so much look like a stack as a pile of pointy sticks stood on end. “Here we have the total stack. The satellite is on the very top.” He pointed to the top of the tallest stick, which did look much like Missions R2 and R3. “Below that the lander, with its landing gear and return engine.” He pointed out the capsule, which sat atop a cluster of three tanks and engines that reminded Chrysalis a bit of Mission 4. “And everything else,” he said, pointing at the collection of fuel tanks, engines, solid rocket boosters, and fins below, “is more or less to get the satellite and lander into orbit.”

“That’s a lot of junk,” Chrysalis said, for lack of any more cogent contribution to the conversation.

“Indeed,” von Brawn said. “Here we have the first stage.” He circled the base of the ship. “Four Thumper solid-fuel boosters and three stacks of liquid fuel powering two Swivels and four Thud supplemental engines. We were going to add a Reliant under the central stack-” he pointed the very center of the tangled rocket parts- “-but it turns out we get better delta-V without it. We’ll be metering the solid fuel boosters so they and the liquid fuel engines burn out at the same time. The fuel tanks will be ducted together so that all the engines draw from all the fuel reservoirs equally.” He pointed to a tangle of ducts and pumps that Chrysalis couldn’t have untangled with a crochet hook.

“Then we go to the second stage. Three Swivel engines.” The minotaur tapped the three engines and their tall fuel stacks in the middle of the blueprint. “This stage also has ducting, but for a different purpose. The ducts here pump fuel and oxidizer out of the outer two stacks and into the central stack, so the central engine doesn’t touch its own fuel supply until the outer two stacks burn out.”

“What’s the point of that?” Chrysalis asked. 

“Ideally the fuel in the outer stacks will be enough to achieve low orbit,” von Brawn said. “Once up, we dump the outer boosters, leaving only one Swivel with a full tank. We use that for the trans-Minmus injection burn, and if enough fuel remains, for the orbital capture burn as well.” He reached a finger up to the lander and said, “On the way out we’ll likely decouple the satellite and leave it to make orbit on its own fuel supply. 

“That leaves us just the lander.” von Brawn circled the capsule and its three engines with a thick fingertip. “The outer two engines get us orbit, approach, and if all has gone well up to this point, landing. Throughout the time in Minmus local space, the scientific equipment on the lander will record information and store it here,” he tapped a square thing on the tip of the capsule where the main parachute ought to go, “for either return to Equus or radio transmission to our computers. We’d much rather have the equipment back, though. We get better quality data that way.

“Once we land and collect such data as we can, the lander activates its central engine.” von Brawn tapped the appropriate spot. “The spent landing engines and fuel tanks, along with nonessential scientific gear, are decoupled.” he continued, making little flicking motions with his fingers. “The remaining ship breaks Minmus orbit, falls back to Equus, ditches its engine, and re-enters. And only these components- the capsule and its immediate attachments, plus the cargo bay with the probe control unit inside- only this of all the stack returns home.” He sighed and added, “Assuming the whole mess doesn’t shred itself on launch.”

“Quite an encouraging statement, doctor,” Chrysalis said dryly. 

“I should much prefer it if we could have used the new generation systems,” von Brawn said. “This is exactly what they’re designed to do. But until they stop exploding when set to full throttle, we just can’t use them… and we don’t have time to wait.”

“And why is that?” Chrysalis asked. 

“Because Twilight Sparkle is moving forward with a crewed flight to the moon,” von Brawn said. 

“WHAT???”