KrisOverstreet

Livewriting: CSP (and last week's product) (Patreon)

Published:

2019-06-05 01:32:51

Imported:

2026-06

Tags:

Changeling Space Program livewriting

Content

Tonight's livewriting begins at 9 PM Central. (Would have announced this sooner, but I spent all afternoon dealing with a broken hose faucet outside...)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Skxg6E0Y7XkDiHs3rdAzQeXlJHVmyExGLnSLcZmLWi4/edit

Here's last week's work.

Outside, two miles west of her, tens of thousands of beings- ponies, changelings, dragons, griffons, minotaurs, and other creatures- had gathered in the heat of a Horseton summer afternoon to watch her launch. Outside technicians topped off her fuel tanks, performed the final checks on her ship- the fully charged batteries, the gimbals of the various engines, the landing gear of the landing stage, the scientific equipment, and the Probodobodyne core which could, in an emergency, take over for her. Outside reporters scribbled down quotes for newspapers, television faces blathered about the painfully obvious, and photographers used up enough film to make a couple of Applewood movies.

But inside the little capsule at the top of the enormous stack it was just Cherry, with a couple of tiny windows, a control panel full of switches and buttons and readouts, and Chrysalis’s voice in her earphones. She could hear the fans of her spacesuit as they cycled air in and out. She could feel the faint creaking of the ship, which reminded her with every little flutter of wind that the success or failure of her mission depended on whether or not a lot of changelings kept their minds on their welding and riveting despite all the many distractions changelings(388) were subject to.

The launch window for Minmus opened at sunset- meaning that launching earlier in the day would force Cherry to wait in orbit while Minmus trundled around Equus until her rocket and the little false-star were lined up for the planned course. There was some fudge factor afterwards, but launching as soon as the window opened gave you more time to fix problems if and when they cropped up. The days when CSP could just say “go” and launch a rocket were ending, and the days of precision launch timing and orderly countdowns had arrived to take their place.

Cherry wasn’t sure what she thought of that. On the one hoof, anything that increased her chances of still eating cherries when she was older than Granny Smith had her approval. But on the other hoof, part of the freedom of flying was the idea that you were free to fly whenever you wanted- just take off and go. She’d miss that, at least where it came to rockets.

The final two minutes of the countdown began, and Cherry got to work performing the final tests. She responded to each of Chrysalis’s call-outs for tests and readings. She heard Fiddlewing’s get-clear shriek at the one-minute mark, as the ground crew cleared out from the pad at top speed. She heard the pumps for the first stage engines, far below her, start up, churning, pressurizing the fuel lines in final preparation for launch.

She set the throttle to ninety-two percent. At that setting, held steady, the liquid rockets would burn out at the same time as the four solid fuel boosters. She activated SAS, shifted in her flight couch the tiny bit her straps would allow, and listened as the count trailed down from ten, to five, and then to one.

Her hoof hit the staging button immediately at zero.

In the first days of the program, a launch combined the heavy pressure of Faust’s own hoof combined with the vibration of a shake mixer. The vibration had remained, but not the absurd acceleration forces. Cherry’s body weighed only twice its normal weight as Mission 22’s altimeter began ticking up, as the engines struggled to lift the enormous mass of the spaceship into the air. This left her more than able to appreciate the ungodly noise of the engines behind her, only partially muffled by the same headphones that allowed Chrysalis at the capcomm station to talk to her.

She reported her actions- tipping down fifteen degrees from vertical, aiming just above the due east line on the nav-ball, at ten seconds into flight. The ship responded smoothly despite the vibrations of the rockets, fully under her control, just as in every simulation. Of course, she thought to herself, the fun stuff begins with the second stage, doesn’t it?

By thirty seconds into the flight she was already flying faster than the speed of sound. The ship rammed its way through air that didn’t want to move aside, the resistance rising with the square of velocity- or was it the cube? Cherry could never remember- until, at a certain point, the ship would meet that magical point known as max-Q, where atmospheric density and velocity combined to exert the most stress the ship would ever encounter in the entire mission.

And by chance, or lax planning, or the simple hodgepodge design of Mission 22, max-Q came almost exactly at the moment Stage 1 burned out.

There had been options, of course: the bugs had finally been worked out of the next, larger generation of rocket engines, which were now in full production in Appleoosa. Mission 22 could have been flown with a single stack of engines and tanks instead of the bundle of explosive sticks Cherry was guiding into the skies. But that would have been an untested design, and Mission R4 had proven this design viable, with a few tweaks. Better to use a known and tested design than to risk the mission- than to risk Cherry’s life- on a new one.

At ninety-seven seconds into flight, right on time, the first stage burned out, liquid and solid fuel systems alike. Cherry held the ship’s nose steady, directly into the prograde circle on the nav-ball, and hit the staging button within half a second of burnout. The stage decouplers fired, and simultaneously the second stage engines lit, pushing the ship through max-Q and away from the disintegrating first stage, whose components tumbled, collided, and exploded well away from the still-rising ship.

Cautiously- very, very cautiously- Cherry began pushing down the ball again towards a more horizontal course. She still owed Dragonfly an apology: the second stage of this design wanted to tumble and spiral out of the sky at low altitude, no matter who was at the stick. It took a skilled pilot to make this design work, and after hundreds of hours in the simulator, and especially now as she felt the ship through her hooves, she’d realized Dragonfly was a pretty darn skilled pilot, after all.

Even now, even with design tweaks to better balance the ship and keep it from constantly tipping northwards during flight, the ship still wiggled in flight. Part of that was due to the ship being underpowered early in its flight; thirty seconds after staging, acceleration was only at 1.5 G, though that was rising quickly as the ship burned through the fuel in its outer stacks. Without the same firm push of the first stage, the ship’s nose seemed to want to go north, south, up, down- anyplace except where Cherry wanted it to go. The SAS system kept things managable, but Cherry didn’t want to think about what it would be like to try to fly the ship up without the stability assist.

And yet... despite her best efforts, the ship’s twitches added up to a gradual southern drift. The mission profile called for a trajectory a bit north of due east, to match Minmus’s orbital plane. She pushed the ship’s nose northward, well above the target, to correct, relaxing slightly as the ship’s wiggling diminished with the thinning air outside.

“Twenty-two, Horseton, stand by for SECO.”

Crud. That was too soon. SECO- Second-stage Engine Cut Off- at this point meant the ship’s apoapsis was at or near the target altitude for parking orbit, on a steeper than planned trajectory. Her course was still too southerly. That meant a fuel-expensive double correction on the orbital insertion burn, eating into the fuel safety margin. Granted, there ought to be plenty of fuel and to spare for the mission, but...

“SECO.”

Cherry shut down the throttle and called back, “Engine shutdown, we have SECO.”

“SECO confirmed, Twenty-two. Current apoapsis projected in two minutes thirty-seven seconds. Orbital insertion in two minutes mark.”

“Twenty-two copies, Horseton.”

Mission Twenty-Two coasted upwards through the wispy upper atmosphere, bound for space. It sole occupant relaxed, considering the situation. There had been a goof-up, and it was minor. There was more than enough delta-V in the mission budget to correct it. The worst part of the flight was over, and the obligatory buck-up was behind her.

It looked like it would be a good flight.

Footnote:

(388) And, to be fair, ponies too.

Chrysalis pretended not to see the denizens of the Bullpen going quietly nuts.

Cherry Berry- miss perfect pilot, miss can’t miss, miss steel-eyed missile mare- had screwed up. As they watched and waited, she was in the process of badly overcorrecting her trajectory, tilting the final orbit well above what was desired for a shot at Minmus. It wasn’t a disaster- just something that would required the minotaur eggheads to completely recalculate the burns for Minmus insertion because the old plans would be totally useless.

They’d asked her to tell the pony to stop the burn and readjust. Chrysalis had refused. She’d learned to tell the difference between the pony pretending to be calm and the pony actually relaxed. Right now she was in her happy place, and considering she’d be up in space for two weeks to come, Chrysalis wanted her kept in her happy place. If that meant burning a little unnecessary fuel, fine by her. Occupant had had the good sense not to try to override her. She’d let him be in charge just as long as he did what she wanted him to do, and he knew it.

Finally, she heard the pony’s squeaky voice: “Shutdown! Horseton, we have orbit, repeat we have orbit.”

Chrysalis double-checked the projection on the wall. “Orbit confirmed, Twenty-two,” she drawled. “Good work.” And, indeed, it was a very good orbit- even Chrysalis had to admit it. Apoapsis and periapsis were within a kilometer of one another- an almost perfectly circular orbit. The fact that it was eleven degrees more inclined than it ought to have been was, to be frank, a minor detail.

But now it was time to deliver the bad news- wrapped in as much sugar as she could manage, and a changeling queen knew how to ladle on the sugar when desired. “Unfortunately I’m afraid you’ve overshot the target orbital inclination a bit,” she continued. “But Trajectory tells me that actually works out to our advantage, since it makes a polar orbital insertion over Minmus much easier.”

She noticed George Bull’s head pop up from the huddle, staring at her with a clear look of betrayal on his face. She switched off her microphone long enough to say, “Make it work!” before switching it back on and continuing, “We’ll have two burns calculated for you in a couple of minutes. Stand by, Twenty-two.”

“Copy, Horseton. Twenty-two standing by.”

Chrysalis switched the mike off again and said, “All right, geniuses. Make it happen.”

“Do you realize you’re asking us to rewrite the laws of motion- of physics itself- for your convenience?” George Bull asked. “Just so Miss Berry won’t feel bad?”

“That’s exactly what I’m asking,” Chrysalis replied coolly. “You get paid the big bucks to work miracles. Well, now it’s miracle time. Get cracking.”

“Well...” von Brawn rumbled from his station. “We’d have to go on this orbit- no parking orbit for final testing- but bringing down the orbital inclination will also get us extra velocity... we’ll have to use the same delta-V for the trans-Minmus injection, but... Dr. Bull, come here and check my calculations.”

The other minotaurs- George Bull, George Cowley, and Marked Knee- gathered around their leader. “It looks correct,” George Bull said cautiously.

“I shall test it immediately!!” Marked Knee said, jotting down some numbers and then rushing back to his trajectory calculation computer.

“Well?” Chrysalis asked.

“If this checks out,” von Brawn said, “the new intercept for Minmus will take a faster trajectory. We’ll have to burn a bit more juice to slow down, but it looks like we’ll shave a whole day or more off the outbound trip.”

“It eats most of the delta-V we saved from not having a satellite on board this trip,” George Bull grumbled. “The second landing is looking a bit iffy after this. We’ll have to see how the orbital insertion burn goes.”

“If we have the fuel to do it, let’s do it,” Chrysalis insisted. “One day less in space is one day sooner she comes home, right?” And, she thought to herself, one day sooner we drop this stupid side-issue and focus on the real job. One day sooner to my hooves touching the moon.

“Um, yeah,” Occupant said quietly. “Sounds good to me, too. How soon can we have the burn procedure?”

“The first burn is straightforward,” von Brawn said. “We can send her that now. The second burn... we have twenty-eight minutes before that, and we want to use all of that double-checking it.”

“Fine-tuning, too,” George Bull said. “The closer the ship comes to Minmus the better. Less fuel used in lowering the orbit.”

“Okay,” Occupant said. “My queen-”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Chrysalis said testily. “Von Brawn, give me that burn info.”

The sun came up over the rim of Equus.

By now Horseton, below and behind her, was in darkness, the princesses of sun and moon having done their jobs to keep Equus’s orbital system semi-stable. Below and ahead of her lay the Horn of Zebrica and Saddle Arabia. And above Cherry Berry lay the rest of creation, and in a few short minutes she would be headed for it.

“Okay, Twenty-Two, we’ve confirmed a good correction burn,” Chrysalis said. “We’re feeding your navball the target now for the trans-Minmus insertion burn. This one will require a burn to burnout of the central second stage, which should take two minutes thirteen seconds, followed by a full burn of the landing stage for thirty-one seconds.”

“Burn to empty on second stage, thirty-one seconds on landing stage,” Cherry repeated. She punched keys on the number pad, entering the times into the ship’s computer.(389)

“After that we’ll burn at minimum throttle to adjust trajectory to bring you as close to Minmus as possible,” Chrysalis continued. “That’ll mostly be due anti-normal, with a couple of antiradial bursts to keep the trajectory from drifting too far left or right.”

“Roger that, Horseton,” Cherry said. “How long until TMI?”

Chrysalis’s voice muttered softly over the connection, something about a year and a half ago.

“Say again, Horseton, I didn’t copy that,” Cherry said.

“Minmus burn in six minutes thirty seconds mark,” Chrysalis said, a bit more clearly.

“Roger, Horseton,” Cherry said. She looked back out the window, as the ship passed over the terminator and the surface of Equus lit up in its blues and greens and browns and whites below her. Six minutes, she thought, until I kiss that goodbye.

“Twenty-Two, Horseton,” Chrysalis’s voice said again after a moment.

“Go ahead, Horseton,” Cherry replied.

“What’s it like up there? We still have a lot of people watching down here who’d like to hear about it.”

Cherry forced herself to smile. Her face, she knew, was being projected on the wall of Mission Control and on a series of giant screens around Horseton Space Center for those who came out to view the launch. They’d all know at once if she showed exactly how much she didn’t want to do public relations babbling with an important burn minutes away. “Well, it’s space,” she said, frantically thinking of anything to say- anything safe, that was. “It feels like I’m flying under my own power, floating without a care.” Her smile became a little more genuine as she added, “Makes me feel hungry.”

“You can have supper after the burn,” Chrysalis said. “How’s the ship performing?”

“Pretty good, with the lower stages mostly gone,” Cherry replied, not thinking anymore about putting on a show for the people below. “It’ll probably fly beautifully once I ditch the second stage. At least, I’m counting on it.”

After a pause, Chrysalis asked, “Did you bring a good book? You’re going to be up there for a while, you know.”

“Actually, I left some good books with you,” Cherry said. “If I brought books up, they’d take up space and cost me delta-V. But if you read to me, I can enjoy the books without having them up here, right?”

This time the pause before Chrysalis spoke became very significant. “I believe you forgot to brief us on that one, Twenty-two,” the changeling queen at capcomm said in a quiet voice.

“Oops,” Cherry said. “Well, I’m sure you can find somepony to do it. Get Tymbal, he’s got a good voice. And it’s not like he can keep saying, ‘This is Mission Control Horseton’ for fifteen days.”

“We’ll take it under advisement, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis said. “Two minutes to TMI burn.”

“Copy, Horseton.” There. PR over, back to work. Cherry checked the target marker, lit up in dark blue on the light-blue navball, and carefully steered the ship on its reaction wheels until it appeared in the center of the ball. “Standing by for ignition call,” she said.

“Ninety seconds,” Chrysalis said, and then, “Sixty seconds,” and then, “Thirty seconds.” At fifteen seconds she began counting down, and when the queen said, “Ignition,” Cherry’s hoof was already on the throttle.

The sole remaining engine of the second stage (the other two having been dumped during orbital insertion when their tanks ran dry) came to life, and Cherry felt the rocket push against her back like the gentle guiding hoof of Faust. This is it, she thought. I’m really on my way.

Fifteen days of flying in space. Most of it just flying, with nothing to do.

If it wasn’t so dangerous, I’d call this the best vacation ever.

The rocket burned on and on and on, steadily accelerating the much reduced ship until, with a sputter, it died, out of fuel. One more explosive collar fired, and with a push of a button the two descent engines came to life, pushing the ship even faster towards the blackness of space. Equus slipped out of view of the little window above Cherry’s head, leaving only the sun and the stars.

And then, at precisely thirty-one seconds, Cherry shut down the engine. “Shutdown!” she reported.

“Good burn, Twenty-two,” Chrysalis reported. “We currently show you flying more or less over Minmus’s north pole at an altitude of one thousand kilometers a little more than five days from now.”

A few more tiny bursts of fuel brought that down from one thousand kilometers to a mere hundred kilometers. Then Cherry Berry deployed the landing gear, turned the ship so that a solar panel face the sun directly, and relaxed.

Minmus or bust, she thought.

Footnote:

(389) Since the burn would be manual, the computer would have nothing to do with it beyond displaying a countdown clock to engine shutdown. Cherry only used the keypad because she still had her spacesuit helmet on, which meant she couldn’t grip a pencil in her teeth to write anything down.