My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

In Teddy's office, everyone gathers: in addition to regulars like Teddy, Venkat, Mitch, Annie, and (on screen) Bruce, there's also Star Control's Mindy Parker.

"So," Teddy said after confirming that Bruce was online, "how are the preparations for the booster test over in the residential area?"

"Their end is ready," Venkat replied. "Mark has completed the process we sent, dismantled the short-range radio transmitter of the northern weather station, and rewired it to increase the transmission power. As long as he gives The transmitter is connected to the power supply, and the battery installed can allow it to transmit signals for two hours. The transmitter itself may burn out less than half an hour after being powered on, but during the period of time it can maintain operation, the signal strength should be enough to be used. All the orbiters on that side of the planet receive it.”

"Well, yes," Mindy Parker answered. She was the only one in the room not wearing formal attire, and the bloodshot eyes on her face made it clear that she had no time to care what these NASA executives thought of the old Astrocon sweatshirt and sweatpants she was wearing. "By Sol 374 we will have six Mars orbiters in place ready to track launches. I have completed testing a software update that will allow the satellites to track signals and transmit telemetry data to us. As long as Dr. Kapol gives me the authorization, I can upload the software patches I need and then go home and sleep."

"Our target time is two hours before sunset," Venkat continued, "This is a trade-off between optimal entry into the sun's orbit and communication limitations. Both Hermes and Earth will be about thirty minutes before sunset. It has dropped below the horizon of residential areas. It is certainly a good thing to have one less piece of space debris. However, the focus of this test is to compare and verify the data we measured with the data they obtained when the system was tested in Xiaoma, to ensure The accuracy of the data needs to be top priority.”

"By the way, speaking of this," Teddy said, holding up a page of paper, "Am I understanding something wrong? The acceleration of six Gs when leaving the launch pad and taking off, reaching a peak of eight points three minutes after launch. Five Gs? The total weight of the fuel and cockpit when this aircraft was launched was twenty tons!"

"According to the results reported by Starlight Glimmer, it is indeed the case," Venkat replied. "As a reminder, the basis for their estimation is that their parent star and the Earth should have the same diameter and similar mineral composition. In this way, their A G is the same as ours. And it should also be noted that their tests cannot reflect whether the propulsion efficiency will steadily decay as the distance increases; what they were doing was an on-orbit launch test, and the booster efficiency was still there. The spacecraft crossed the horizon at about 80 percent. In short, these are the results of their estimates."

"Warning received," Teddy interrupted, "Just tell me what this means for this launch. On Earth, a G represents the acceleration value of nine point eight meters per second, right? ?So how fast will the test aircraft be this time?"

"Actually, compared with their tests, the difference is quite big," Venkat explained. "For example, after the ponies did the last test, they decided to extend the battery power supply time and prevent passengers on the MAV from Being crushed into meat patties requires limiting the energy flow to the booster. In this test, instead of fifteen large batteries, only nine ordinary batteries were used. The total thrust of the booster system they predicted was attenuated by 100 About sixty percent."

"However, according to Mark's measurement, the mass of the test aircraft finally selected is only 1.62 tons." Venkat said with a smile and added, "You can notice that tons is a little smaller than their tons. .So even if the target aircraft only receives % of the thrust, the flight speed will definitely be much faster. Assuming Xiaoma and their test data are accurate, we predict that the acceleration during launch will be almost G."

After hearing this, Mitch immediately stumbled up from the sofa. Mindy was completely sleepless. Teddy whistled in surprise.

"Can you explain it in normal people's language?" Annie was not on the same channel as them at all.

"The instantaneous acceleration of thirty G will cause serious damage to the human body." Venkat replied, "If it is a sustained thirty G, it can be fatal in just a few seconds."

"In other words," Mitchell also explained, "that rocket engine will accelerate faster than the cannonballs fired during the Civil War almost the moment it leaves the launch pad."

"In about two seconds, actually," Bruce corrected him on the other side of the screen. "According to Starlight, their expectation is that this battery array can drive the propulsion system for about seventy seconds. Assuming ideal conditions - —The launch trajectory is vertically upward and is not deflected by air resistance. After these seventy seconds, the target's flight speed relative to Mars will reach 20 kilometers per second, and its altitude will be less than 700 kilometers."

"Twenty kilometers per second," Teddy murmured.

"That's right." Venkat continued, "The theory in aerospace dynamics is that our orbit cannot directly hit the sun, but the resulting solar orbit is close enough to the sun to make it A fleeting comet.”

"Twenty kilometers per second." Teddy repeated again, "No fuel is required. There is no need to install an engine on the aircraft. It only takes a little more than a minute to reach a speed of twenty kilometers per second." He He took a deep breath and said, "Have we asked those ponies why they haven't used this system before?"

"Not yet, but I can think of several shortcomings from the beginning," Venkat replied. "First of all, they can't control the direction of this thrust. It can only push the target away from itself. Secondly, after exceeding the boost system After the working range, their spacecraft still needs to rely on the onboard engine to achieve operations such as attitude control and orbit change. And finally, this system needs to rely on an object with a mass of planetary level as a benchmark, otherwise it will be under Newton's first There are serious difficulties with the Three Laws. If you try to use one spacecraft to push another spacecraft, the end result will be that the two spacecrafts will accelerate away from each other in different trajectories."

"It's very possible that they haven't thought of it before." Anne said casually.

Everyone's eyes focused on the director of the public relations department.

"Oh my god, please, couldn't you fucking geniuses have thought of this?" Annie looked in disbelief. "Think about it for yourselves. They live in such a world full of magical energy, and they don't even have to wait until they invent something. They reluctantly developed the magic battery technology after an engine consumed magic energy so fast that it couldn't absorb it from the environment. What they were thinking was not, 'We can't raise this thing, so let's get some batteries.' But, 'We can't raise this thing with magic, so let's just mess around with a bunch of dangerous explosives and radical new ideas like electronic technology and radios and see if we can come up with something good.'"

"But then there were these few people who were thrown into our world where magic energy is as scarce as the rainfall of royal horses. They didn't have any rocket fuel or electronic equipment or other novel gadgets that they had just figured out, but they left By sheer luck, they discovered enough crystal deposits to make new-age hippies wet their dreams. So the idea was, 'We don't have rockets anymore, but maybe we can try magic again.' And they just stumbled upon it. "The Holy Grail of space exploration - cost-effective, reusable ground-based space launch technology - was developed entirely by accident."