Today's writing: Changeling Space Program (Patreon)

In this time of COVID-19 and quarantines, of course I get the same old sinus infections at home. But I press on...

(note: in our last installment Rainbow Dash has talked Twilight Sparkle into letting her take ESA-13, the second flight of Amicitas, up solo. The mission is twofold: first, to test a specially-built moon lander in Equus orbit as a dress rehearsal; second, to conduct orbital refueling followed by trans-lunar injection, orbit of the moon, and return to Equus.)

* * * * * * * 

"Forty meters at zero point four."

"Looking good, Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash's voice replied through the telepresence spell, as the target blip of ESA-14 crept cautiously towards Amicitas's dorsal docking port. 

For Equestria Space Agency's Mission Thirteen, the previous four days had been as smooth as Sweet Apple Acres cider(450). Amicitas's launch would never become routine, as razor-edge as the range of successful flight profiles to orbit was for the ship, but the launch had come as close as possible, except for the need to burn over seventy percent of the ship's monopropellant thruster fuel to circularize into a safe orbit(451). Once there, Rainbow Dash had it easy, while Applejack and the other ponies on the ground had busted flank to get the Mission Fourteen stack assembled and on the pad.

Mission Fourteen, being so much lighter than the previous launch, didn't need to waste monoprop on getting to orbit. The aeroshell fairing had protected the fragile moon lander exactly as designed, then peeled away on schedule with zero damage to the craft inside. Solar panels had extended, the little ship had powered up, and within half a day it took up station in orbit less than a hundred meters away from the much larger Amicitas. 

Now Applejack watched Fluttershy at what would normally be the CAPCOM station, sweating and trembling as she operated the controls that guided ESA-14 slowly and cautiously towards its target. A pony focused on the image on the telepresence wall, looking at the steady, direct glide of the bug-like lander towards the winged tube of Amicitas, wouldn't have known that the soft, quiet, steady voice calling out a slowly reducing distance every few seconds belonged to a pony on the brink of nervous breakdown. But Applejack knew, and she worried. 

"Twenty meters. Velocity steady."

"You got it, Fluttershy. Just like in the sims."

Applejack suspected that the only thing allowing Fluttershy to hold herself together was Rainbow Dash's confident voice responding to every callout. According to the communications protocols- protocols Dash herself had insisted on after Flight Five- she ought to order the chatter stopped. For that matter, Dash using Fluttershy's name instead of either Baltimare or Fourteen broke a flight rule. But some things were more important than rules, so Applejack remained silent while Dash provided extra struts for Fluttershy's confidence.

"Ten meters. On target. RCS off."

The lander's maneuvering thrusters- the Reaction Control System- shut down. The head of the lander coasted down on the screen, about to meet Amicitas's back. Two identical-looking rings, one on each ship, drew closer at the rate of about one hoof per second.

"Electromagnets on."

"Electromagnets on."

Inside the docking rings on each ship, electricity flowed to powerful magnets, amplifying their power. The two ships accelerated together on screen for a moment, and-

"Contact!" "Contact!"

-they met, the smaller ship wobbling around the point of contact for a moment or two.

"Soft capture confirmed!" Rainbow Dash's voice called out. "Engaging clamps!"

Inside the ring, a series of small but sturdily-built hooks extended from one ring into the specially-made holes inside the other.

"Red... red... green light!"

The hooks turned sideways like twelve keys in twelve locks. Beneath them, servomotors whirred, pulling the connection tight.

"Hard capture confirmed!" Rainbow Dash called out. "Baltimare, this is Amicitas: Chickadee is home!"

Hooves stamped the floor throughout ESA Mission Control, including the press gallery(452). Applejack let the applause go on, stepping away from her station to walk over to the capcom seat, where Fluttershy had slumped back into the backrest, panting, eyes rolling with relief. She waved a hoof at Moondancer and Minuette, who walked over and gingerly lifted the prostrate pegasus out of the chair. 

As the two unicorns carried Fluttershy away to recover from the strain, the new capcom pony came onto the circuit. "Excellent work, both of you."

"Is that you, Twilight?" Rainbow Dash asked. "You're back early! What happened to the cruise?"

Easing into the chair just vacated by Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle sighed. "Don't ask," she said. "Flight, capcom?"

"Oh, right," Applejack muttered. Quickly putting her own headset back on, she said, "Capcom is now Twilight Sparkle. Capcom, Thirteen is go for inspection of Chickadee, with simulated moon landing operations to begin 0900 tomorrow."

"I can hear you, Baltimare," Rainbow Dash chided. "Can we get a return to normal comms protocol now?"

Applejack nodded silently to Twilight Sparkle, who said, "That's affirmative, Thirteen. And once you're done with the post-docking checklist, we need to review mission protocols for the lander shake-down. We have to launch Flight Fifteen tomorrow and dock it with you the day after to stay on schedule."

"Roger that, Baltimare," Rainbow Dash said. "Just a second while I unseal the docking ports, and we can do the geek thing all you want."

"It's not the geek thing!" Twilight insisted. "It's being safe!"

"Tomayto, tomahto," Rainbow Dash repeated back.

Applejack, back at her station, relaxed. She almost felt right at home. 

Footnotes:

(450) Which she'd insisted be included in flight rations for this mission, though the amount she'd actually gotten hadn't been nearly what she wanted. Applejack had replied that it was the very first pressings of the season, that Dash had gotten the jump on the line she'd always wanted, and it wasn't asking too much that the blue pegasus be a little bit more grateful.

(451) A fact which had been kept from the general public, as with Amicitas's first launch on Flight Eleven. Once simulations had revealed that Amicitas could only just barely make orbit, even with all its booster rockets and its huge disposable external fuel tank, the thrusters had been renamed the "Orbital Maneuvering System." To be fair, it was that. But Applejack had commented at the time that it would have been more truthful to call it the "Orbital Achieving System."

(452) Which upset the cameraponies who were capturing the event for television, because the bouncing threw everything out of focus.

"Fourteen(453), you are go for ascent stage ignition!"

"Copy go for ascent." 

Rainbow Dash stood at the controls of the lander, one hoof on the switch which would dump two-thirds of the little ship's mass to tumble away in orbit, eventually to decay and fall back into atmosphere in a brief ball of flame. It still seemed a waste; there was more than enough fuel still in the descent stage's tanks to bring it back to Amicitas intact. If it had been designed for in-flight refueling... 

... but it hadn't. The descent stage was totally inaccessible from inside the lander's cockpit, which precluded any orbital refueling. And besides- as Twilight had pointed out- they wouldn't really know if the ascent stage worked until they tried it, which meant throwing away a working descent stage. And if, for whatever reason, the staging failed, then better to have a working descent stage that could get Dash back to safety, at least potentially.

All very logical, but Rainbow Dash still disliked the idea. It seemed a bit ironic: Twilight, who had spent over a year working towards a single reusable multi-purpose spaceship, was going to land on the moon using a disposable ship, while Chrysalis, whose organization ran entirely on expensive, disposable, one-and-done rockets, were going to land on the moon in the same ship they went there in. There was something backwards to that, but Dash didn't have the egghead words to explain it.

"Ascent stage ignition in three, two, one." A beat after one her hoof hit the switch, and the lander bucked underneath her as the tiny ascent engine lit. The tiny dot of Amicitas, which had shrunk for the past hour as Dash performed maneuvers on the descent stage, began growing larger again as the lander slowed in orbit, dropping back down to the lower orbit it had begun in.

"We read successful decoupling and ignition of ascent engine," Twilight Sparkle's voice replied. "Set shutdown clock for ten seconds."

Rainbow Dash twisted a knob on the controls. "Shutdown clock set."

"Engage clock in four... three... two... one... mark!"

"Clock engaged!" Dash reported. She'd hit the button right as Twilight called the mark, and she watched as the clock counted down the seconds. The shaking and roaring ceased the moment the clock hit zero, leaving Dash in free-fall again, held in place by a forehoof on the controls and the clingy stuff on the boots of her rear hooves. 

"Shutdown on time, Baltimare," Dash reported. "How's my time back to Amicitas?"

"We show Amicitas intercept in seventeen minutes at three point four meters per second relative," Twilight responded. "Well within RCS manual control parameters. Good work, Rainbow."

"Thanks, Twi." Dash shifted her rear hooves, testing the grip of the cling-strips. "The main engines throttle fine on the descent stage. Thrusters kick like Big Mac, though."

Pause. "Applejack wants to know how you know how hard her brother kicks, Fourteen."

"Ask Applejack how many of her trees I've been napping in when her brother is applebucking."

"That explains it... Applejack says it better explain it... anyway, any other observations you want to share, Dash?"

Rainbow Dash looked at the controls. "Some more advanced computers on the lander would be nice," she said. "And map and trajectory projection screens. This computer only holds one landing and one ascent profile, right? Every time I have to go manual, all I have to go by are the instruments and the window. For a shakedown it's okay, but for actual landing this ship absolutely needs two ponies unless you get some more computers in here."

"Pinkie Pie's doing the best with the electronics we have," Twilight replied. "The minotaurs at CSP are keeping their best designs to themselves. A computer that can do what you're talking about would just weigh too much for the lander."

Yeah, and if we weren't racing CSP to the moon, we could take our time and develop the good computers, Rainbow Dash thought. And get the magic thrusters working reliably on a scale larger than RCS. And figure out a way for Amicitas to land under its own power without an atmosphere. And a bunch of other stuff.

But, since all of that was stuff that couldn't be said on a hot mike, Dash just said, "Well, you asked. Aside from that it's a pretty good craft. Build another like it, and let's go to the moon!"

"Not until you get back," Twilight said. "We need photos to pick out a good landing zone."

"Right, right," Dash muttered. "Lemme know when I'm about to pass Amicitas, okay?"

Footnote:

(453) The orbiter, Amicitas, was Flight Thirteen. The lander, unofficially named Chickadee by Fluttershy, was Flight Fourteen. So long as Rainbow Dash was flying in the lander, she was flying Fourteen, not Thirteen. This might or might not have had some influence on her desire to bring the lander back intact and keep using it.