1-3-19 Livewriting: CSP Mission R4 (Patreon)

Next livewriting session Friday, 7 PM Central.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q8CL4JfXQT9PI2yeI0TlbV0jt3qRnBk4oV8j0FIxSwU/edit?usp=sharing

Here's tonight's product.

Chrysalis could tell her people were nervous. The occupants of CSP Mission Control’s bullpen checked and double-checked projected trajectories. Dragonfly, manning the remote controls at the capcomm position, ran through the system tests with more alertness and care than Chrysalis could ever remember her demonstrating before. Occupant, wearing a shiny new white vest with a paisley print back, openly fidgeted as he went down the checklists. 

All of them seemed edgy to the changeling queen, but she hoped her tour group of reporters and minor dignitaries didn’t notice. It didn’t seem like they did. The ponies and other creatures sharing the VIP gallery with her had their eyes glued to the telepresence screen showing the huge, overcomplicated spacecraft. Like the thousands of spectators in the grandstands outside, they had come to see a rocket launch- not to watch some changelings and minotaurs bumbling about in a large room full of desks. 

The final go / no go calls were made.

Fiddlewing’s clear-out sound shrieked across the space center grounds. 

Dragonfly moved her hooves, activating the probe computer, engaging its SAS module, and setting throttle on the liquid fuel engines to eighty percent.

Chatter in the VIP balcony went silent as the ponies and other dignitaries leaned forward in their seats, listening to the timekeeper count backwards slowly towards zero.

Zero came, and with it smoke, flame, and motion. A few seconds later sound joined these, thunder loud enough to shake the Mission Control building and rattle the grandstands outside- the sound of six liquid fuel rocket engines and four solid-fuel boosters igniting simultaneously for the first time in Equus’s space flight history. 

Mission R4 took to the skies, slowly at first but with an inexorable acceleration.

Once the thunder of the initial launch faded, Chrysalis could hear the chatter of the mission control room relayed through the speakers into the little glass room. 

“Having trouble holding attitude fifteen by eighty-three, Flight. Something’s producing a marked westwards rate.”

“I see it. Booster? Any comment?”

“Could be imbalance in the ship design or drag in the payload assembly. Without the fairings every little bump on the ship produces turbulence.”

“Two hundred ninety meters per second at thirty seconds. One point five gees.”

“Thirty seconds to max Q.”

“Flight, this ship is even more squirrelly than in the simulators. She’s fighting me every inch of the way up.”

“I see that, Capcomm. Do your best. We really need it on prograde for staging.”

“Working on it, Flight. Wow, it’s fighting me.”

“Getting a slight shimmy in the first stage liquid boosters, Flight.”

“Okay. Anything we need to worry about?”

“Probably not. We’re keeping an eye on it.”

“Coming up on max Q. One point eight gees and climbing.”

And then, for the ears of the VIPs and press alone, a new voice cut over the mission control chatter- a deep, confident voice, that of a changeling Chrysalis had picked out for this specific task.(Y) “At one minute into launch, Mission R4 is on trajectory and schedule, approaching Max Q. Max Q is the point at which aerodynamic forces are greatest during launch. Shortly after Max Q the ship will stage, ignite its second stage engines, and go to full acceleration.”

The speakers switched back to the Mission Control headset circuit just in time for Dragonfly to say, “Okay, I’ve got her back inside the prograde circle, but I can’t hold her there!”

“Max Q. Coming up on first stage burnout.”

“Speed and trajectory within acceptable limits.”

The solid boosters and the liquid fuel engines burned out within a second of each other. 

“Burnout! Staging now!”

On the screen, the lower quarter of the massive tangle of rockets appeared to drop off… and to collapse in on itself. A huge explosive cloud engulfed the lower part of the remaining rocket. Half the VIPs gasped with shock, Chrysalis possibly among them(Z).

And then Mission R4 put the cloud behind it, three Swivel engines burning white-hot plasma, the ship swaying back and forth for a moment before slowly, carefully, bending towards an easterly trajectory. 

“Second stage shows three good engines, no fuel or oxidizer loss,” the voice of George Bull called from the bullpen. “All systems go for orbit!”

“What caused that?” Occupant asked. 

“Drag from the main ship drew the loose stage components together,” Warner von Brawn said. “Residual fuel in the tanks detonated. But nothing appears to have struck the second stage hard enough to penetrate the outer shell.”

“Capcom, flight.”

“Go, capcom.”

“The outer fuel tanks are burning a lot faster than I remember them going down in the sims,” Dragonfly said. “Did we mess up on programming somewhere?”

“Tracking still shows us within parameters,” George Bull answered. “But the simulator does have an ongoing problem with optimistic fuel consumption rates.”

“We have more than enough to get to orbit and to Minmus’s sphere of influence,” von Brawn added. “But we may have to tap into the landing stage earlier than we anticipated.”

“Well, at least the ride’s smoothing out now,” Dragonfly said. “It isn’t trying to jump out of its prograde anymore.”

“Almost certainly aerodynamic issues with the design,” von Brawn said. “We’ll revisit that for Mission 22.”

“Ten seconds to SECO,” George Bull called out.

“Confirm, Trajectory,” Occupant said. “How are we on orbital insertion?”

“We’re going to need a large insertion burn,” Bull said. “Stand by… three, two, one, mark!”

“Shutdown!” Dragonfly called out, and then, “Throttling back up to ten percent for attitude correction.”

“Ninety by eighty-three if possible,” Bull replied.

As the sky behind Mission R4 on the projection screen faded to the black of space, the ship began slowly turning to a fully horizontal orientation. 

“Full throttle for orbital insertion in one minute, ten seconds,” George Bull said. “And I do mean full throttle. We’re not going to get orbit on what’s left in the outboard tanks.”

“All right,” Occupant said. “But we will get orbit, right?”

“No problem,” Bull replied. “We’re still go for Minmus, much less orbit.”

The smooth, deep voice took over the speakers in the VIP room again. “At four minutes into launch, Mission R4 is now coasting up and out of the atmosphere. Its engines will re-ignite shortly to complete a circular orbit in preparation for its Minmus insertion orbit burn. This gives Mission Control one last chance to evaluate all systems before committing to the trip from Equus to Minmus.”

One of the VIPs- some duchess or something out of Trottingham, Chrysalis thought- leaned over the seats and asked the queen, “Pardon me, but I rather thought you lot were already committed to going to Minmus.”

Fortunately, even if she hadn’t been in a position to make any decisions, Chrysalis had had plenty of time to catch up on the decisions that had been made. “Of course we’re going to Minmus,” she said. “But how much we get to do there depends on how good our burn is. This is only the second time we’ve sent a craft beyond low Equus orbit. We want to be able to make plans or adjustments now, while we’re close to home and still have plenty of fuel, rather than be caught in Minmus local space with no fuel, no power, and no way to get our results back here to ground.”

“I see,” the duchess said. “It’s like stopping the carriage just out of town to check your luggage before you hit the highway for Canterlot!”

Chrysalis nodded and managed a smile, restraining the desire to compare, in exact detail, the uselessness of Canterlot’s unicorn nobility with the earth pony aristocracy of Trottingham. Microscopes would no doubt be required…

“Ignition!”

“Confirm main engine ignition,” von Brawn called out. “Twenty-eight percent remaining in outboard tanks.”

“That’s a bit low,” Dragonfly muttered. “Go faster, darn it!”

On the projection screen, Equus below it, Mission R4 burned and burned hard, speeding up to orbital velocity… or, at least, towards it. Long before any periapsis marker appeared on the trajectory projections, the outer two rocket engines flamed out, their tanks having been drained to keep the center tank filled until now. 

“Outboard tanks empty,” Dragonfly called out. “Jettisoning tanks.”

The sound of a switch on Dragonfly’s console going click echoed through Mission Control. On the screen, nothing happened. 

“Um… guys? I mean, Flight, Capcom?”

“Booster?”

“Glitch in staging sequence,” George Bull said. “Try it again.”

Another click echoed through Mission Control, and this time on the screen the nozzles of the lander’s descent stage slid out of the now useless outer parts of the second stage like a foot coming out of a slipper. The still-live center stack of the second stage flew neatly through and out of the dead outer stacks, not so much as bumping the loose metal. 

“Beautiful,” the reporter from the Canterlot Herald muttered to himself, seated two seats down from Chrysalis. 

Fool, Chrysalis thought. We were supposed to have an orbit already. Now with just a single engine, it’s going to take forever to complete circularization. And dragging the empty stages? That was more wasted fuel. This could be trouble…

“Nosing up slightly to maintain apoapsis,” Dragonfly said. “Just a little. We lost a lot of efficiency somewhere up the line.”

“Okay, Capcom.”

“We lost a lot of efficiency,” George Bull reported. “And we’re losing more. Center stack at seventy percent.”

“We still have orbit on this stage,” von Brawn mumbled confidently.

“Yeah,” Dragonfly replied, “but what about after?”

Fuel burned away. The arc of Mission R4’s trajectory continued to widen on the projection, until finally- FINALLY- a periapsis marker appeared on the far side of the simulated planet. 

“All right, throttle down and prepare for shutdown,” George Bull said. 

“I know, I know,” Dragonfly grumbled, her hooves moving along the controls. “She’s holding well… steady… aaaaand shutdown!” 

Mission Control went silent for a few seconds. 

“Confirm shutdown,” von Brawn finally announced. “Twenty-seven percent remaining in main second stage. Orbital angle is seven point two degrees offset from the orbital angle of Minmus. Orbital correction burn calculations are underway.”

“Roger, Tracking,” Occupant said. 

“Oh, boy,” Dragonfly said. “How much delta-V is that correction going to eat up?”

“It’s a rather large discrepancy,” von Brawn said. “Four, maybe five hundred meters per second?”

“Can we afford that and still have a Minmus landing?” Occupant asked. 

The large blonde minotaur grunted. “Possibly not,” he admitted. 

“Then let’s go straight there,” Dragonfly said. “Look, there’s two points in the orbit where the orbital planes cross each other, right? So why don’t we hit Minmus at one of those points? How long do we have to wait until the next one?”

“It’s an idea,” George Bull said. “I’ll work on that.”

Footnote:

(Y) The voice, which had practically none of the usual changeling buzz harmonics in it, belonged to a guard who knew next to nothing about space flight but who could read and write Equestrian fluently. He had a script of things to say at certain points, plus a somewhat more experienced changeling runner to bring freshly written script pages if and when the mission went off-script. The reader didn’t understand a word of it, but he sounded like he knew everything and that nothing could possibly go wrong, and that was what Chrysalis wanted and needed out of an announcer.

(Z) But since no camera was pointed at her at the time, she would deny it afterwards.