Livewriting 1-13-2019: CSP Continues (Patreon)

Next livewriting begins Monday 1-14-2019 at 7 PM Central:

 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q8CL4JfXQT9PI2yeI0TlbV0jt3qRnBk4oV8j0FIxSwU/edit 

Discord for chats:  https://discord.gg/QjREED  

And incidentally, do any of you have any of the Jackbox online party game packs? I'm seriously thinking about buying one or more of those to do some online gaming events with you, the reader/donors... but there's not much point if there's no interest.

Writing from the last couple sessions below:

“Looks like a good separation,” von Brawn said cautiously. “Recommend setting lander to automatic and assuming direct control of the satellite.”

“Okay, do it,” Occupant replied. 

This took a few minutes. The control systems for Probodobodyne cores had been built so that CSP Mission Control could only control or reprogram one probe at a time. For missions like this, one ship had to be set to basically do nothing except keep itself alive before the controllers could talk to the other one. To make sure this didn’t end up with orders going to the wrong ship, or possibly to both ships, there was a careful, step-by-step checklist: confirm the current on-board program, set the lander probe to automatic operations, send the wake-up code for the satellite, run various tests to make sure everything’s operating correctly, and begin active operations. All of this took place on a lightspeed time delay of almost ten seconds round-trip. 

To everyone’s relief, every step ran smoothly down to the very end, when the satellite opened its relay antennas. Once that was confirmed, Dragonfly said, “Okay, we have a satellite and we have a lander. But we don’t have ‘em in orbit yet. What comes next?”

“The satellite will reach its Minmus closest approach about ten minutes before the lander,” von Brawn said. “Twilight Sparkle designated a high orbit for the satellite, so its orbital burn will be shorter, and there will be a long delay before the next orbital adjustment burn to put it in its proper place. In the interim, the lander will execute a longer burn, dropping it into a very low orbit around Minmus, from which we may plan our landing.”

“What happens if something goes wrong?” Occupant asked.

“Well,” George Bull said, “the satellite contract required us to approach Minmus from behind to get the correct orbital direction. That means we get a small acceleration from Minmus as we pass by, according to Dr. Goddard’s equations.” The nattily dressed bull looked around and added, “Since Dr. Goddard isn’t here today, I can safely tell you that we call it the Old Bird effect after him.”

There were only one or two brief chuckles, and von Brawn quickly moved in to fill the silence. “In practical terms, this means that if either vehicle fails to burn at the appropriate time, they will be flung entirely out of Equus local space, entering into their own separate orbits around the sun. A different trajectory could have brought them back to us if they missed the burn, but with the satellite contract that wasn’t an option.”

“Okay. So we have to get this right.” Occupant took a deep breath. “How long until the burn?”

“About two hours,” George Bull said. “I’ll have the burn procedures finalized long before then, for both craft.”

When the numbers came back, they were... worrisome. 

“Is this the least fuel required to do this?” Occupant asked, gaping at the numbers projected on the wall. 

“Gravity and momentum don’t change for us mere mortals,” George Bull replied. “We burn that fuel, or we lose the craft.”

By the time the burn was complete, the two landing tanks would have only about twenty-five percent of their fuel remaining. After that remained only the single tank reserved for the return flight. 

“Okay, change of plans,” Occupant said. “We settle for a circular orbit for the lander for now. Once we get that, we need to talk about our options.” He sighed and said, “It’s time to talk about losing either the landing or the return.”

Two orbital burns later, Chrysalis and Cherry Berry were called out of Mission 22 training to sit in with the senior Mission R4 controllers. “Okay,” Occupant said. “We have the satellite in orbit with about one-third of its tank remaining. That’s more than enough to get it in the correct orbit.” He held up a hoof-full of crisp, new checks. “In addition, the Royal Astronomical Society has given us milestone prizes for fly-by and orbit of Minmus. So the good news is, the mission is fully paid for. 

“The bad news is, the contract we have for temperature scans of the surface and near-orbital spaces is scrubbed,” he continued. “The contract specifies particular locations. If we went into polar orbit, maybe we could get the scans, but we didn’t.”

“We weren’t optimistic about nailing the target landing site anyway,” von Brawn rumbled. “We still haven’t scouted it.”

“So what’s left,” Occupant continued, “is the landing, return home, and all the science experiments the ship can do while on or near Minmus.” He tapped a sketch of the lander on the whiteboard. “The outboard tanks are down to twenty-five percent,” he said. “We don’t know if that’s enough to land on unaided.”

“Probably not,” von Brawn said. 

“And even if it were,” George Bull continued, “we’d have to burn some of it just to get close enough to attempt a landing.”

“The center tank is full,” Occupant said. “We could ignite that tank and use it as part of the descent. But we don’t know if what’s left would get us off Minmus and back to Equus.”

“Possibly,” von Brawn said. “Based on our orbital calculations, Minmus gravity is quite low- a fraction of the moon’s. 

“So, from where I sit,” Occupant said(A), “here’s our options. The lander definitely has enough fuel to make a low-level pass around Minmus, break orbit, and get home safely. We don’t get the landing, but we do get a lot of research and, more important, our ship back.” He tapped the center fuel tank again. “Or we land, using the central engine and fuel tank, and risk not getting the ship back. Some of the experimental data can be sent by radio, but we’ll lose most of it.” He looked around the room and added, “If anyone has any other possible plans for the mission, I’d be glad to hear them.”

Cherry Berry raised a hoof. “What if we could land, take off, and get back to orbit, but not home?” she asked. 

“If we get to orbit,” von Brawn rumbled, “then getting home requires but little more delta-V. It’s not impossible, but it’s an unlikely scenario. We shouldn’t even consider lifting off from Minmus unless we’re committing to a full trip home.”

Cherry leaned back in her chair, thinking hard. “All right, but suppose we did it anyway?” she insisted. “Mission 22 could pick up the data, right?”

“At a cost of extra delta-V for the rendezvous,” von Brawn said. “I advise against it, at least for the first mission.”

Chrysalis tried not to choke. So far as she was concerned, there wasn’t any reason to go to that little iceball of Luna’s more than once. Whatever magic power you could wring out of it paled by comparison to the power of the moon. It was only worth the trouble because it gave the pony and the eggheads a trial run for the moon landing- not for any other reason. Out loud she said, “I agree. It’s an unnecessary mission risk if we can radio the science home.”

“Anybody else?” Occupant asked.

This, Chrysalis thought, could drag out forever. “Look,” she said testily, “this is my space program, isn’t it? And the primary goal of the mission is to test equipment for Cherry’s landing, correct?”

“Yes, my queen,” Occupant answered immediately. 

“So if we don’t even try to land,” Chrysalis continued, “then the primary mission fails and we have to send another robot out there and waste another three weeks. While Twilight Sparkle is getting ready to launch her giant pink asparagus up in Baltimare!” She shoved the briefing papers in front of her away with a hoof. “We do whatever we need to do to get that landing. And we do it by making conditions as close to Mission 22 as possible. That means lowering orbit without using an ounce of the landing rockets.”

Von Brawn actually raised his eyebrows at this. “And what of liftoff after the landing?” he asked. 

“Worry about that if we actually land!” Chrysalis snapped. “If we bring back the ship, well and good. If we radio back some scientific data to keep Twilight Sparkle and the Royal Astronomical Society happy, dandy. But we went there to land a ship. And that’s what we’re going to do!” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “Now go make it happen. This meeting is adjourned.”

“Um, my queen,” Occupant said, raising a trembling hoof, “technically I’m in-”

“I said adjourned!”

“Yes, my queen!” The trembling hoof zipped back down.

Chrysalis left the briefing room, a spring in her step. That’s the way to be a leader, she thought. Cut through the blather and make things happen. 

Whatever would they do without me?

Footnote:

(A) While standing.

“Stand by for fifty percent retrograde burn for eight seconds.”

“Standing by fifty percent retrograde burn for eight seconds.”

“Flight, we are go for orbital adjustment.” 

“Proceed.”

“Orbital adjustment burn in five... four... three... two... one.”

“Ignition.”

Radio signals went out from the large transmitter dishes rising from the flat ground of Horseton Space Center. In a fraction of a second they hit one of the ESA satellites in geostationary orbit, which recorded and retransmitted the signal in a focused beam towards Minmus. The newly placed communications satellite there, still not quite in its assigned orbit, picked up the signal four and a half seconds later and relayed them to the slightly larger craft skimming the surface of the little planetoid at a mere nineteen thousand kilometers. 

Within half a second of the time designated as the optimal moment for the orbital adjustment burn, the lander’s central engine blazed to life, just as it had for the first orbital adjustment burn several hours before. For eight seconds the engine burned, slowing the craft gently to an orbit that at no point rose higher than seventeen thousand kilometers from the surface, with a periapsis just below ten kilometers in altitude. 

Then the engine shut down, its fuel pumps ceasing, the little glow of plasma winking out. 

Five seconds before, and over a million kilometers away, Dragonfly said, “Shutdown! Burn completed!”

“Acknowledge shutdown...” For five seconds everyone watched the screen. The telepresence spell didn’t have the limitations of lightspeed as radio did, but experiments in controlling probes via telepresence hadn’t worked out well, at least not so far. Thus, it took five seconds to see the probe receive the shutdown order, to see the little Terrier engine cease burning. It took another five seconds for telemetry readouts to receive the probe’s radio-transmitted reply acknowledging the order. 

“Orbital adjustment confirmed,” George Bull said at length. “Good burn, no adjustment required. We have a safe parking orbit above Minmus.”

Sighs of relief went around the room. “Okay,” Occupant said. “Dragonfly, run all the experiments for low orbit and transfer the data to the storage can.” The storage can was a new bit of equipment for when a mission didn’t have an astronaut on board; the probe could send data recordings in detail to the can, where recording media would hold much more data than either CSP or ESA knew how to transmit and receive over radio links.(B) Mission R4’s data storage unit already held the data from experiments taken on the way down from high Minmus orbit, and a few minutes later the same experiments were repeated, recorded, and sent to join the previous batch.

While this was done, no one mentioned the single most important fact from the two orbital adjustment burns: the central engine and its isolated fuel tank still held well over eighty-five percent of its fuel. 

But once the science was done, someone needed to speak up, and eventually it dawned on Occupant that that someone had to be him. As flight director, he was the one, Chrysalis notwithstanding, who made the final call on all flight issues. And the fact that they had used very little fuel to get a close orbit at a surprisingly low velocity changed the situation. “Okay, um, Flight to all stations,” he said. “Um, given the, um, the lots of fuel still in the tanks, I want a go or no-go for reactivating the landing engines and going for landing.”

“Vehicle is go, Flight,” von Brawn said.

“Trajectory go,” added George Bull. 

“Systems are all go!!” Marked Knee added.

“Capcom is go,” Dragonfly said. 

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Now I have another question. If we get a good landing, are we go or no-go for liftoff and return to Equus? Trajectory?”

“In light of the orbital adjustments and our orbital velocity,” George Bull said, “I’d say we’re very go, provided we don’t slip up on the way down.”

“The algorithm we set for the probe should be able to deal with the terminal phase of the landing!!” Marked Knee said. “But if we can pick out a flat location, that would be for the best!!”

Occupant looked at the telepresence projection, which showed what looked like an enormous frozen lake behind and below the lander. “I think that won’t be a problem,” he said. “Anybody else?”

No takers. 

“Okay,” Occupant said. “Then we’ll go for landing and return tomorrow. Everybody make sure the craft is secure. Then check on the satellite and calculate the next orbital adjustment burn for that. We need to know the timing on that.  I’ll talk with the queen so she can make the announcement.”

Footnote:

(B) Remember that radio, for Equestria, is still an incredibly new invention. Although audio recordings, speakers and microphones have been in common usage for a century, the possibilities of radio passed the ponies by until the advent of magic-powered television inspired certain musically inclined entrepreneurs to explore the potential of the electronic-only technology. Electronic television hasn’t even been conceived of yet, at least not at this point in our narrative.

* * * * * * * * * * *

The morning dawned with bustle and activity at Horseton Space Center, almost as much as if an actual launch were scheduled for the day. The telepresence spell had unicorns boosting it to project immense copies of its images into the air in front of the spectator stands outside the VAB. Boats and ships crowded Muck Lake, despite the fact that none of them could get close enough to see the relay screens. And the VIP gallery had filled with the better class of VIP, most notably Celestia, Luna, and Twilight Sparkle. The press and their cameras had actually been exiled to untenanted stations on the Mission Control floor- with the strict understanding that they were to remain absolutely silent until operations were concluded.

The plan for the day, put in two words, was Minmus Landing. In slightly longer terms, the day would begin with deorbit, landing on a carefully selected ice plain, and (ideally) relaunch and return to Equus of R4’s robot lander. The communications satellite wouldn’t be in position for its next orbital adjustment until quite late in the day. 

And with Cherry Berry having chosen to take a seat on the Mission Control floor, Chrysalis found herself in the center of it all, with reporters asking her for quotes and for information(C), with Twilight Sparkle babbling away ninety to nothing about this or that scientific marvel, and with various lesser celebrities greeting her with politeness and gritted teeth(D). 

Even Luna dropped a line of conversation Chrysalis’s way, at a point when Twilight Sparkle was too busy with quill and paper to keep up her babble. “I confess,” she said quietly, “I have never seen one of my stars like this before. I can feel it out there...” She reached a hoof up and batted at the air, as if reaching for the distant little world. “I can feel it, but I never envisioned it. It is... quite strange.”

“It’s quite the experience for me as well, princess,” Chrysalis said politely. The lumpy ice ball which Luna had named “the little mouse” centuries ago looked like nothing Chrysalis had imagined or could have imagined. The eggheads had claimed that its just-below-freezing temperatures were maintained by a very delicate balance between the sun’s rays and the extremely high reflectivity of the tiny moon’s surface. Twilight Sparkle had said something about “albedo”, which Chrysalis had thought was that stupid party game where you had to walk on your hind legs, bent backwards, under a pole.(E) 

Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof, had called it a scoop of mint ice cream in the hearing of two changelings, and now half the hive was asking whether the little moon was good to eat.

“I suppose it is,” Luna said quietly. “Today you have the entire land on a string. Every pony in Equestria must be wondering what you are doing this day.”

I’m laying the foundations for your downfall and removal, Chrysalis thought. Perhaps I shall banish you to Minmus once I have your moon under my power, and once Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Cadance, Discord, and whoever else are dealt with. “But of course,” she said aloud. “It’s only natural to be curious about the future. And that’s what this entire enterprise is about- exploring the future of all Equus.”

Luna shot Chrysalis a suspicious glance and went silent, which suited Chrysalis fine. Her little line had caught the attention of the four newspaper reporters who’d been permitted to retain their seats despite the demands by VIPs(F). She could hear their pencils scribbling away, and it gave her a little warm feeling in the frosty depths of her heart.

Unfortunately, Twilight Sparkle’s quill had stopped scribbling.  “This is so amazing!” she cried out for about the forty-sixth time. “Who could have imagined, two years ago, that we would be able to send a machine to visit another world?”

“For my part, Twilight,” Celestia said, “I’m glad it’s only a machine in there. That’s a very risky journey for a pony to make.” Thus far, aside from greeting Chrysalis when they met that morning, Celestia hadn’t addressed a single word directly to her. She said quite a bit when Twilight’s jaw paused in its waggling, but Chrysalis couldn’t quite make up her mind if the sun princess’s little quips were directed at her, at her protege, or were really just honest expressions of her own feelings.(G)

“And yet,” the queen said, acting as if she and not Twilight had been the target of Celestia’s observation, “a pony shall make that journey quite soon, if all goes well today. Or possibly a changeling. Cherry Berry and I are both in training for that mission.” 

That triggered a round of questions, from the lesser VIPs and the reporters alike. Chrysalis smugly gave answers, many of which were less than fifty percent lie. Here and now she felt important again, as she ought to, being a queen.

Being the future absolute ruler of the world, she mentally corrected herself.

There was one niggling problem, though, one drop of spite in her delicious bowl of love: she hadn’t actually done anything to deserve this attention. Not on this mission. That hadn’t ever bothered her before- she’d taken credit for her subordinates’ actions many times before.(H) And she’d demonstrated her decisiveness and her leadership on enough occasions since her revival that her status with the hive was no longer in jeopardy. But it still bothered her... and she couldn’t understand why.

Of course, her mother had told her that no changeling was ever completely satisfied. Changelings weren’t silly, mindless little ponies, content with a tiny rut to guide their every hoofstep from cradle to grave. No matter how well-fed a changeling was, a changeling always wanted more... and a changeling queen more so than any of her subjects. 

But this wasn’t that. This wasn’t hunger for more. This was... dissatisfaction, yes, but not the dissatisfaction of not having enough, not even the dissatisfaction of not wanting what one had. What kind it was, she just didn’t know... and not knowing spoiled all the enjoyment of this moment. 

Fortunately, there would be more enjoyable moments ahead. Already the countdown to the scheduled burn had dropped below one minute to go. The controllers on the floor were tensing up as the moment of truth came, as on the telepresence projection the little ship, the remainder of the colossus that had left Horseton eight days before, shone in the sunlight under an eternally dark sky.

The initial burn would be a brief one- only five seconds. Five seconds was all that was necessary to put the ship on a suborbital trajectory terminating near the far end of a long lake near the equator. That would allow the entire length of the lake for a landing zone, in theory. The main obstacle to the plan- literally- was the over two thousand meter high bluff that overlooked the western end of the lake, which would be death to the craft if it came in on too shallow a flight path.

The timekeeper counted down to zero. 

Dragonfly worked the controls, sending the command signals over a million kilometers away. 

Five seconds later, right on time, the ship sparked to life, firing its engines almost invisibly, slowing down in its tight, lazy orbit. 

Five and a bit seconds after that, the ship shut down. 

And the gallery waited in silence, Chrysalis as tense as the others, for the word to come up from the bullpen. That word took entirely too long- any hestiation, in fact, was longer than should have been needed for a good burn.

“No joy on lake landing, Flight,” George Bull finally said. “The ship fired just a fraction too long. Trajectory shows us falling well short of the western end of the lake, on that large midlands region.”

“Copy, Trajectory,” Occupant said, all business. “What do you recommend?”

“If the ship had a pilot inside, manual corrections would be enough,” George Bull said. “Or if we had a larger delta-V margin. As it is, we have fifteen minutes to either abort or find an alternate landing site.”

“No,” Chrysalis whispered to herself, up in the VIP gallery. “We came to land, darn it.”

“Then let’s use the minutes.” Cherry Berry, according to protocol, had no role on the floor and no right to speak, but that didn’t stop her from taking charge. “We have fourteen minutes of safe coasting on inertia before we have to abort, and it’ll only take a tiny burn to get back into orbit. This is a full-scale simulation. Work the problem.” 

Chrysalis growled. The pony was undoing in one little speech all the work she’d done to rebuild her image with the hive as its true leader. How dare that little pink-

“And remember,” the pink such-and-so concluded, “what Chrysalis ordered us to do. We didn’t go all the way to Minmus to turn tail and come back. We went to land. So let’s find a place we can land. That’s her orders.”

- ooooooooh, that little pink menace was getting gooooood. She’d given herself a Chrysalis-shaped umbrella for her violation of protocols while, at the same time, backing up her authority and openly subordinating herself. She’d pushed to the edge and then pulled back at just the right time. 

Ninety-nine percent of Chrysalis knew that it was accidental, that Cherry Berry didn’t want her job and didn’t care or even understand about power struggles and manipulating support within the hive. But one percent doubt had kept Chrysalis in power for more years than she cared to think about. 

You bear watching, my little test pilot.

Meanwhile the lander on the screen coasted onwards, gradually picking up speed as it descended at a very shallow angle towards the snowy hills of Minmus. 

Footnotes:

(C) A little of which, by chance, she actually knew, and the rest of which she faked.

(D) When an equine grits teeth, you may be sure it is expert gritting being done. 

(E) Equines from the planet Earth, for all their ingenuity in getting over, through, or around fences, are physically incapable of this feat, and even less capable of conceiving of the action as a form of sport. Even the natives of Equus tend to regard it as something best contemplated after about three mugs of really strong cider.

(F) If the dragon ambassador had been able to fit through the doors, those four reporters would have been out of luck. Fortunately for them, Ember had other matters to attend to, and the mighty elder dragon she’d given her VIP pass to for the event now perched on top of the VAB, crowding the television cameraponies and about a hundred pegasi and changelings to the very edges of the roof.

(G) The idea that the three categories might not be mutually exclusive, and that Celestia could be doing all three at once, remained forever beyond Chrysalis’s comprehension.

(H) The way she reasoned it was: since she had to pay the penalty for her subjects’ many, many, MANY acts of blind stupidity, incompetence, and well-meaning but disastrous enthusiasm, then she deserved the credit when they somehow failed to fail. That credit was bought and paid for, and therefore it was hers.

“We’re running out of time here.”

Mission R4 was still skimming above the surface of Minmus, its altitude steadily dropping all the while. Back on Equus, the mission controllers watched the screen and worried. 

“Nothing but hills and valleys!” Dragonfly grumped. “Not a flat spot for ages!”

“We need to make a decision shortly,” von Brawn said. “In about two minutes,” he continued, using a control to adjust the angle of the telepresence spell’s view of the spacecraft, “the ship is going to plow into the side of that large bluff. We need a landing space now, please.”

“Huh...” Dragonfly’s voice trailed off for a moment in a contemplative tone. “The top of that bluff looks kinda flat.”

“But is it?” Occupant asked. 

“It’s sure flatter than anything else we’ve flown over!” Dragonfly snapped. “And it’s a choice between that, the hills, or the valleys. And I’m not going to try to land a robot on a five-second delay on a hillside or in a valley!”