Tonight's writing: Changeling Space Program (Patreon)

(Note: KSP Hard Mode tonight begins 7 PM Central, and will run Mondays and Wednesdays at that time throughout the month of February at http://twitch.tv/redneckgaijin/ .)

THIS MONTH'S GOAL THUS FAR: 7,500 WORDS

THIS MONTH'S WRITING (INCLUDING TODAY): 2,421

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"... perfect equatorial orbit, one hundred fifty kilometers altitude, orbital deviation three percent," Rainbow Dash said with satisfaction as she removed her hooves from the probe controls. ESA-12, the fourth Equestrian communications satellite, had just joined the changeling CSP-R2 in orbit around the moon. 

"Confirmed stable orbit," Moondancer called from the trajectory console. "Satellite is generating power, stable, forty-five percent fuel remaining in tank."

"Good," Applejack said, "Go for test signal."

"Okey-doke!" Pinkie Pie called out, tapping a few keys on the EECOM console in front of her. Three moments later, she said, "Test signal returns A-OK! No errors!"

"Well, all right," Applejack said, nodding to herself. "I reckon we got a satellite!"

Up in Cape Friendship's mission control gallery, Twilight Sparkle shook hooves with Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, then with each of the eight reporters who'd stuck around for the orbital insertion and single adjustment burn needed to put the new satellite in its planned orbit.

"So, beans are go(438), right?" Rainbow Dash asked, looking expectantly at Applejack.

The orange pony at the flight director station shook her head. "Beans are for launches, Dash," she said. "Besides, you'll get all the beans and cornbread you want on th' campin' trip. Rarity and the Cutie Mark Crusaders are waitin' for us back in Ponyville!"

"Oh, yeah," Rainbow Dash said, slumping a bit at her console. "It's that time of year, isn't it?"

Applejack raised an eyebrow. "You didn't forget about the annual campin' trip ta Winsome Falls, did ya?" she asked. 

"Well," Rainbow Dash pointed out, "I kinda had this satellite launch, and there's also training for Mission Thirteen to come..."

"Now, you know a promise is a promise," Applejack insisted. "And it won't be too much longer afore Scootaloo is a grown mare and on her own. Ya gotta make time for th' important things."

"I know," Rainbow Dash agreed. "And a promise is a promise. But..." She looked at the gallery, where Twilight, relieved from the hoof-shaking, was staring down at the ponies on the floor. "We're kinda on the clock here, right?"

"Will you relax?" Applejack said, stepping away from the flight director podium. "Th' changelin's don't launch their Minmus probe for another three days. It'll take a week after that ta get there. An' if somethin' goes wrong on it, they'll have to do it all over again. We can spare th' time ta have fun with our families, right?"

Dash smiled a little. "Yeah, you're right," she said. "But we'll just have to work harder when we get back."

"Psst," Rainbow Dash whispered. "You got any of that anti-itch cream left?"

"No," Applejack whispered back. "Ain't you over those flyder bites(439) yet? It's been a week!"

The two of them sat side by side in the crowded visitor gallery at Horseton Space Center's mission control, watching as Changeling Space Program's Mission R5 made its final descent to the surface of Minmus. 

"I think a flyder hitched a ride back home in my backpack," Rainbow Dash hissed. "I'd swear I wake up every morning with fresh bites."

"Sssh!" Twilight Sparkle hissed. "Watch!"

The representatives of the Equestrian Space Agency settled into silence as, on CSP Mission Control's main screen, a half-wagon, half-rocket bearing a vague resemblance to a flyder(440) hovered on its own thrust just above the icy surface of Minmus, then shut down its engine and flopped forward onto its wide-sprawled wheels, where it bounced a couple times in the minimal gravity.

"I bet I could do that with Amicitas," Rainbow Dash whispered.

"Dash, be quiet!" Twilight whispered back. Then, ignoring her own order, she continued, "Amicitas weighs fifteen times as much, and the moon has four times the surface gravity. Don't you even think about it!"

"You sure sound like you've thought about it," Rainbow whispered back.

"I've done the math!" Twilight said, no longer whispering. "The nose gear would snap off like a dandelion stalk!"

"SSSSHHH!" half a dozen ponies hissed, bringing on a moment of silence... 

... broken by a shout from the mission control floor: "Why didn't you fools test the thing on the GROUND??"

"We DID test it on the ground, my queen!"

On the screen, instead of rolling over the steep hills of the Minmus highlands, R6 hopped and bounced like a bull in a rodeo. Attempts to steer it merely resulted in the probe lifting one forward wheel or the other in what appeared to be an attempt to flip the whole thing over. 

Shutters clicked on cameras from one end of the VIP gallery to the other. Pencils scrabbled across notepads with blazing speed. 

"I think the changeling moon flight just got delayed," Rainbow Dash chuckled.

"SSSSSHHHH!!" every reporter and photographer in the gallery hissed.

An hour later, after much trial and error(441), CSP-R5 did complete its mission... but at the cost of massive embarrassment to the changelings.

And equally massive relief to the ponies of Equestrian Space Agency.

(insert R5 mission summary here)

Footnotes:

(438) Applejack had brought a pot of slow-cooked beans and some cornbread for lunch after the first ESA launch. The beans proved popular among the other Elements of Harmony, and Applejack was forced to bring a larger batch for the second launch. By the infamous ESA-05 launch demand had grown beyond Applejack's ability to haul pre-cooked beans from Ponyville to Baltimare, and thus neither beans nor cornbread were in Cape Friendship's commissary at the time of Rainbow Dash's Very Nearly Bad Day. A number of Cape Friendship workers blamed the bad flight on the absence of the "lucky beans", in addition to the other causes. Rainbow Dash had insisted that the recipe be given to the commissary cooks in preparation for ESA-06, and beans and cornbread had become an ESA tradition ever since.

(439) Flyders are a pest endemic to the forests of northwestern Equestria. Thought to be a leftover of the Days of Madness (the period of Discord's rule, ending with the discovery and first use of the Elements of Harmony by Celestia and Luna), flyders are omnivorous, highly aggressive, and immune to all forms of insect repellent. Only their lack of venom keeps them from breaking into the official Top Ten List of Nightmarish Creatures of Equestria. 

(440) Not really. CSP-R5, with its four long spindly girder legs ending in wheels and its comparatively skinny central body, more resembled a water strider if anything. However, after their annual disaster of a camping trip, both Rainbow Dash and Applejack had flyders (metaphorically) on the brain, and after listening to stories from the trip Twilight Sparkle was halfway there as well.

(441) Light on the trial, very heavy on the error. It eventually proved easier to simply return the probe to the skies and fly cross-country to the target zone, then cover the last fifty meters by hopping, flopping and wobbling.

"Read all about it! Get your Ponyville Chronicle right here!"

"Ooh! I love reading about what's going on!" Pinkie Pie giggled, dropping a bit into the frog of the newsfoal's waiting hoof and taking one of the papers from the stack on the Ponyville train station platform. "It's always good to be a pony in the know, you know?"

"All I know is," Rainbow Dash said as she slumped on a bench, "we're FINALLY ready to begin sims on Flight Thirteen. And I've only got a week before I have to go practice for the Wonderbolts show in Tall Tale! When is that train gonna get here?"

"Aren't you the teensy eensy least bit interested in hearing all the good news in the paper?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"If you ask me," Applejack said, pulling her own luggage trunk up onto the platform, "Dash doesn't care what's in the paper if it isn't her own name."

"Hey, I have a healthy self-image, all right?" Rainbow Dash snapped. "Wasn't that train due ten minutes ago?"

"Huh," Pinkie Pie said. "New Shrubbery in Castle Garden. Isn't that interesting?"

"Whose castle?" Applejack asked. "I don't remember Twilight havin' any landscapin' done."

"Snoozeville," Dash said.

"How about this? The Neighbors Upstairs Second Series Announced."(442)

"Who has time for television?"

"Noodles Favorite Food of Whinnyapolis," Pinkie continued. "Author A. K. Yearling Announces Retirement. Changelings Go For Moon Rover on Friday." 

"WHAT?" Rainbow Dash sat bolt upright and yanked the newspaper out of Pinkie's hooves. "Let me read that!"

"But Dashie!" Pinkie protested. "We already knew all about the new rover!"

"Not that, THIS!" Rainbow protested, poking her hoof into the middle of the newspaper. "It can't be true!"

"Well, I'm kinda surprised noodles won the vote too, to be honest," Pinkie shrugged. "But different foods for different dudes!"

"No! Not that! I mean... rrrgh!!" Rainbow Dash threw the newspaper back at Pinkie Pie before rushing up to the ticket counter and shouting, "Hey! Hey, you! I need to change my ticket! When's the next connection to Vanhoover?"

Applejack groaned. "So much for simulations," she muttered. "Pinkie, you better go with her. Try to keep her from breakin' her fool neck, all right?"

Pinkie Pie looked over the newspaper at Dashie. "Her neck doesn't look that stupid to me," she said. "Of course, I don't really know what a stupid neck looks like. Or a smart neck, either. How could you tell?" Blue eyes crossed in intense thought. "I'm pretty sure I know what a happy or a sad neck look like, though. Maybe happy necks are stupid, because you know what they say, 'Ignorance is bliss,' right? Or maybe not, because there was this time I didn't know Mrs. Cake had used up all the blue icing on a birthday cake just when my blueberry-raspberry cupcakes were ready, and when I went to get some and couldn't find any I wasn't blissful at-"

"Pinkie. Just go, all right?"

The modified robot car, no longer looking like a long-legged insect, rolled effortlessly across the surface of the moon, steering first one way and then the other without mishap.

Pencils scribbled and cameras clicked just as furiously as they had two weeks before. 

Applejack sat in her seat next to Twilight and watched in silence. Rainbow Dash hadn't come for this event: she and the other Wonderbolts were in training, practicing their show for Tall Tale. 

It was getting harder and harder to get away from Sweet Apple Acres for these things. Summer was coming to an end, and cider season lay only four weeks away, The contractors building Twilight's new school seemed to be coming up with new and inventive ways of delaying construction(443). Every gathering of Twilight's core group of friends came at a great struggle against the centrifugal force of individual interests and duties. 

Applejack snuck a glance at the purple princess next to her. Rainbow Dash was the beating heart of ESA, the force that kept pushing forward, but Twilight Sparkle was the glue that held it together... and the strain showed on her face. Her cheek occasionally twitched. Blood vessels stood out in the whites of her eyes. About every third time she spoke in a conversation she went into babble mode, only cutting off her stream of thought with an obvious effort of will. Applejack had seen her in much worse shape... but that didn't make her current frame of mind good.

"Primary mission complete, Flight." That was the changeling at the controls of the probe- Dragonfly, that's right, that was her name. "Request permission to proceed with performance tests."

"Roger, capcom," Occupant said. "You are go for performance tests, beginning with speed run."

"Okay, flight. Let's see what's on the other side of that ridge. Rocket throttle to five percent."

Five percent of rocket throttle on the rover's four wheels was more than enough to goose it up to twenty-four meters per second in a few moments, at which point Dragonfly shut off the engine and kept the rover rolling on the electric motors in the wheels. The rover bounced along merrily on the uneven surface, moving much more steadily than its predecessor had on Minmus... 

... up to the point that a rock appeared in its path.

"Oops!"

Whatever Dragonfly did with her controls took a second and a half to reach the rover, thanks to the difference between the instantaneous telepresence illusion projected on the wall and the speed-of-light radio controls she was using. By the time her order to steer away, hit the brakes, or whatever reached the probe, it was already tumbling end over end, one of its solar panels and its two front wheels sheared away. Other parts exploded or bounced away from the thing before what was left of it- one solar wing, the probe core housing, and the rocket's fuel tank and engine- came to a stop on the lunar surface. 

"Oooookay," Occupant's voice barely cut through the scribbling, photo-taking, and film-shooting, "that's something we know not to do next time."

Applejack slumped in her seat, wondering if there would be a next time. Or if the changelings, having proved they could build a workable rover(444), would move on to their main goal again.

All things considered, it didn't seem safe to bet on the first possibility.

Footnotes:

(442) Of the several television plays Chrysalis had invested in, The Neighbors Upstairs was by far the most popular. This came as a mild surprise to Chrysalis, since she'd honestly thought a show that presented changelings in natural form would have turned off ninety percent of pony viewers. However, since she was perfectly happy to admit she was wrong if it benefited her and if she didn't have to say it out loud, she'd given the go-ahead to a new series about a changeling in Haywaii who had adventures and solved mysteries. The article whose headline Pinkie Pie had just read also referred to this project by its title: Macula PC.(445)

(443) Many of which, though Applejack didn't know this, they had developed while working on Horseton Space Center. After over a year of near-constant construction and upgrades, work had tapered off there, and a lot of construction workers and contractors had shifted in groups to the new Ponyville project. They were discovering, to their great pleasure, that a lot of tricks which Queen Chrysalis had seen through instantly lasted for as long as a week before either Princess Twilight or Applejack put an end to them. This made them very happy workers, and in turn it made the merchants and landlords of Ponyville even happier.

(444) Build it, but alas, not drive it.

(445) Private Changeling.