AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 35
ARES III SOL 38
“Well?” Dragonfly asked. “What did he say?”
Starlight Glimmer tried not to drag her hooves as she walked over to the other members of her crew. Their host, Mark, sat at his worktable in obvious deep thought, occasionally sparing moments to glare at them- at her. “He’s still very upset with me,” she said.
“I could have told you that,” Dragonfly said.
“We used up most of the battery talking about these perchlorates,” Starlight continued, ignoring the bug. “He still doesn’t understand why I didn’t know what they were. The translation spell isn’t good enough to explain.” She allowed herself a moment of grumpiness as she added, “Which is why all of us should be trying to learn his language and not just me, right?”
“Why didn’t you know?” Dragonfly asked. “I knew! So did Cherry! We had to know! We built I don’t know how many solid rocket boosters using the stuff!”
“And we bought them from you and never made our own,” Starlight replied. “Twilight and I focused on magic thrusters instead of chemical ones. We never needed to know the alchemy!”
“Chemistry,” Dragonfly corrected.
Starlight sighed and again, ignored the changeling. “Of course Twilight probably knew. She knows everything. She went to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns! But I’m a specialist, not a generalist! I know magic because I was a bitter little filly obsessed with changing the world! The only chemistry I know is what I picked up in the margins of obscure magic texts!”
“Calm down,” Cherry Berry said, putting a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder. “We’re not blaming you, and Mark will forgive you soon enough.” After another comforting rub, Cherry Berry added, “So what do we do about it?”
“He doesn’t know yet,” Starlight said. “He says none of his tools are safe to handle the stuff.”
“Yeah,” Dragonfly added. “When we handle the stuff, we don’t use the pure chemical- only about 70% concentration at most. Even then you have to store it in non-reactive metal containers until you mix it with the fuel. And it has to be done in absolutely dry conditions.” The changeling chuckled as she added, “Not exactly tough to do in Appleoosa.”
“How do you clean up a spill?” Starlight asked.
“For a small spill, you dilute it and wash it away,” Dragonfly said. “But you use a hose and stand back, because sometimes it’ll catch fire when it gets wet.”
“Sometimes?” Spitfire asked.
“Yeah, lots about this stuff is ‘sometimes’,” Dragonfly said. “Cherry, remember the time a drum of the stuff spilled and it caught fire just from the shovel?”
Cherry nodded. “And it only happened that one time. We couldn’t make it happen again. Not that a lot of changelings didn’t keep trying. Idiots.”
“Long story short,” Dragonfly said, “the stuff is stable in normal conditions if you leave it alone. Usually. And sometimes it’ll blow up if you look at it funny. But certain stuff will quite definitely set it off- Goddard showed us that in the lab.”
“What kind of stuff?” Starlight asked.
“Metal shavings, if the metal’s reactive,” Dragonfly said. “Magnesium, titanium, and aluminum especially. Also practically any flammable oil or plastic. And even some of the non-flammable plastic. Not flesh, but you get chemical burns if you handle it directly for too long. And, if you get it hot enough, it’ll burn itself.”
Starlight’s jaw dropped. “And you worked with this stuff?” she asked. “You sold this stuff to us?”
“Remember all those times we said we were flying into space in tin cans on top of bombs?” Cherry Berry said solemnly. “It wasn’t a joke.”
“The good news is, ‘sometimes’ in this case is ‘not often,’” Dragonfly added. “We can handle this if we're careful. We just need tools that won’t react to the stuff, and we need to keep the stuff from getting hot.”
“Well, that’ll be easy here,” Fireball rumbled. “This whole planet’s an ice box.”
“That matches what Mark told me,” Starlight nodded. “He wanted to know if I could use magic to make it go away. But there’s so much of it!”
“How big a job are we talking about here?” Fireball asked.
Starlight considered the question for a moment. “Let me get the whiteboard,” she said. “I’m going to tell Mark where we’re going. You all need to see this, because this job is going to take all of us.”
They didn't walk. In the end Mark ended up driving them to the cave, with Starlight, Dragonfly, and a magic battery riding inside with him as the other three clung to the equipment racks on top of the rover. Starlight Glimmer had the distinct feeling he was going along to keep them out of further trouble.
The first thing Dragonfly said when the six of them entered the chamber with the massive pile of perchlorates in it was, “Whoa. Yeah, you do not want to try using a hose on that.”
“That’s going to take weeks to shovel out,” Spitfire gasped.
“If we had a good sturdy wagon, it’d take, oh, about fifty trips,” Cherry Berry estimated.
“How do you know?”
“Hauling wagons was one of the many, many odd jobs I took before I became an astromare,” Cherry replied. “And I’ve hauled dirt a few times. That pile looks like about a hundred and fifty tons, wouldn’t you say?”
Spitfire shrugged. “You lost me,” she said. “The only thing I ever knew about dirt is how much it hurts when you crash into it.”
“Anyway, a sturdy four-pony wagon- a four-wheeler- will carry five tons of dirt easy, even up to eight on flat ground if the wagon’s in good shape. The only hard part is getting the dirt on the wagon in the first place.”
Every spacesuit turned to face Starlight- even Mark’s, although he only looked once he noticed all the others turning.
“Maybe,” she said. “If the magic holds out, and if I don’t collapse. But we haven’t got a wagon.”
“Hey, here’s an idea,” Dragonfly said. “Maybe Fireball could eat it.”
Five spacesuits found something more interesting to look at than Starlight.
“No, I’m serious!” Dragonfly said. “Dragons eat gems and bathe in lava. They’re burn-proof. It’s worth asking!”
“Bug, have you gone bughouse?” Fireball asked. “Count the number of dragons we have here.”
“Um, Fireball, we all know-“
“Count the dragons.”
The changeling sighed. “One. One dragon.”
“Right. One young, small dragon. With only one stomach.” Fireball waved a claw at the giant yellow-white pile of powder. “How much do you think I can guzzle down? Even Torch would have leftovers for a week!”
“It was just a suggestion,” Dragonfly muttered, kicking a hoof in the non-perchlorate dust.
Satisfied, Fireball turned to look at the mound again. “But now you’ve got me curious,” he said. “Starlight, have we got any way to take some of this stuff back?”
Starlight shook her head inside her helmet hard enough to rock her whole upper body. “I am NOT asking Mark about that,” she said. “Not in the mood he's in.”
“Fine.” The dragon tapped his helmet where his chin would have been. “Then can you bring one of the spoons from the ship and give me an air bubble?” He traced the outline of his helmet and shoulders with his claws.
“Er… I think so,” Starlight said. “It’ll eat most of the remaining battery if I do.”
“Shouldn’t we tell Mark?” Cherry Berry asked pointedly.
“He’ll only say no,” Fireball muttered.
“Don’t you think we’ve given him good reason to say no?” Cherry replied. “Considering the last two magical experiments we’ve done?”
“Look, what’s the worst that can happen?” Fireball asked. “I get sick to my stomach, big deal. As long as there’s no arsenic or mercury in that, it won’t kill me. Let’s just do it.”
"Let me rephrase myself," Cherry said grimly. "We should tell Mark. If we want him to trust us again, we should trust him." She waved a hoof at Starlight. "Go tell him what we're going to try. Exactly what we're going to try. Then, if he doesn't say no, proceed, but be as quick as possible,” she said. “We can use that magic power tomorrow or whenever we start shoveling this stuff.”
To Starlight's surprise, Mark didn't have another fit of language so bad it broke the translation spell. In fact, he didn't say anything at all when she told him about the experiment. He just swept his hand in a slow okay, go ahead motion. But even then, Starlight was pretty sure that he was looking at Cherry Berry and not herself when he did it.
Starlight turned up the magic battery and concentrated. The magic stretched, reaching an enormous distance considering the lack of environmental mana, and fumbled for a moment inside the ship. Then it locked on to target and pulled, kicking her in the gut with the effort of summoning even a single teaspoon from six miles away.
In a flash of light one of the steel spoons from Amicitas’s pantry dropped into Fireball’s suited claw.
The dragon carefully wrapped his claws around the spoon and put his free hand to the locking ring of his helmet. Starlight concentrated again, crafting a holding field and wrapping it around his upper body. Fireball twisted the locking ring open, then used both claws to remove his helmet and set it down on the ground well away from the perchlorates.
Mark’s hands moved in a series of confusing, agitated gestures. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) none of the Amicitas’s crew could hear his words or see his face.
As Starlight felt the strain of channeling the magic from the mostly-empty battery into her semi-permeable forcefield spell, she watched Fireball move around the pile, getting as close as he could without stepping on any of the stuff. He reached forward, nimbly scooped a teaspoonful of mixed perchlorates, and carefully walked back to his helmet.
Then- and only then- did he put the heaping teaspoon into his mouth and swallow. After a moment’s thought, he reached down for his helmet, then stopped, stood straight again, threw back his head, and launched a flaming belch that extended well beyond the forcefield and up to the crystals lining the cave’s roof.
Mark jumped at the sight, falling down on his rump.
Once Fireball got his helmet back on, Starlight dismissed the spell, leaning on the battery for support. “That’s all for today,” she said. “The battery might have charge, but I don’t.”
“So how was it?” Dragonfly asked.
“Spicy,” Fireball said. “Definitely not something I’d want to make a meal out of. But I think it’d go really good on all this bucking quartz.”
MISSION LOG - SOL 38
During the Manhattan Project, the nuclear scientists performed several experiments which put two lumps of uranium together into a critical mass for only a fraction of a second so they could measure the resulting chain reaction. They called it "tickling the dragon's tail".
I think I'm the first human ever to see the same thing done by a real life dragon, though.
But it's given me an idea. Now to see if the ponies are on board.
And that's how CSP found a new market in gourmet dragon seasonings.
In any case... Yeah, Starlight discussing the issue with the others more might have been a good idea. Especially if some of them could've seen those chemical formulae. Still, what's done is done. Now comes undoing it, along with whatever idea Mark now has.
What's the show on dementiaradio called? I might give it a listen tonight.
Dementia 101?
I TOLD YOU SO!
150 tons of oxidizer? That’s going to be one mighty solid rocket booster.
I have this awful CSP class this is a Really Bad Idea thought.
All the explosive rocket fuel is in the entrance of the narrow throated large volume gas filled cavern. If the mana battery is filled enough, Glimmer can cast air bubble and teleport.
My crazy idea is, put Fireball inside the cave. Have him breath fire on a spot on the inside surface of the pile to ignite it. Have the resulting blast preferentially erupt out of the entrance as an asymetrical burn?
Or would the thermal and volumetric pressure increase in the cave cause it to explode so hard it drops big quartz spears through the rovers, hub and has a good go at taking out satelites?
8689644 No, KWLP is On the Air (so named because my one-man business's initials are WLP).
Poor Starlight, can't be an omnidisciplinary scientist like her mentor.
But what about dragons?
I am looking forward to dragon-based science.
8689680
it would burn back before it burned forward and completely destroy Fireballs spacesuit as a result. even if he didnt burn, no air to breathe on Mars
It's interesting that changelings got from stone age into space age in few years. That sounds imposible.
During the Manhattan Project, the nuclear scientists performed several experiments which put two lumps of uranium together into a critical mass for only a fraction of a second so they could measure the resulting chain reaction. They called it "tickling the dragon's tail".
Yeah, it was almost called "How to make a small nuclear explosion in a laboratory when your equipment screws up" if I recall correctly. I seem to remember one scientist, a screwdriver, and a lot of adrenaline when one of the subcritical bits got *stuck* to another subcritical bit, and a sudden prying was needed to keep from having the worlds smallest nuclear fizzle take place. Just because nuclear scientists are geniuses, doesn't mean they're smart.
8689751
Well, first remember that magic is involved, and that muddles stuff up.
But beyond that, the world as a whole wasn't in the stone age; they ended up recruiting a lot of skills and genius from elsewhere. In CSP, they have invented video games prior to the space program being launched in Equestria, so there was already electronics from the getgo. Just not used by changelings in the hive at the time.
hundred and fifty tons? how much is it in TNT? would it be like a small nuke going off,or a MOAB?
8689751 Changelings are quite literally a parasite society. Using pony society as a benchmark is a better example.
In this case, remember that ponies have quite a lot of technology potential that's never been realized because, except in isolated circumstances, they've never seen a need to develop it properly. Ponies could have cars if they wanted, but they only build them for race cars or parade floats because there's no demand for things like trucks or family autos. Airplanes are rare to almost nonexistent because pegasi can tow ordinary chariots or wagons through the air thanks to their magic. And ponies could have had computers ages ago, except that demand for precise complicated calculations is almost nonexistent because a simple spell can adjust for any miscalculation... making video games and music the only market for the product.
Between the potential for magic and the odd bits of tech that slip through the ponies' societal paralysis, Equestria has the potential for multiple revolutions in industry and technology, if there's a serious need to do something new.
8689794
enough to crash a Minecraft server
8689794 The two don't compare. TNT is a true explosive, fuel and oxidizer in one complex and frankly scary molecule. Perchlorates are only oxidizers, though horribly efficient oxidizers with nasty side effects. The pile might stay there indefinitely, depending on how much water vapor is in the already thin air (there's very little, but Mars does have some), the exact chemical composition of what it's sitting on, and the sum of the pressure of the mound's own weight.
Of course, the problem is, our heroes need to move it elsewhere, and that's the trick.
Wow! Ponies are strong for their size.
8688957 But BETTER nanomachines use assimilation so as not to waste useful materials! I am best at Grey Goo.
8689827 Magic makes a whole lot of things VASTLY easier than technology used for the same task. It's basically the same as having cheat codes in Starcraft.
Why is she gasping? She was there!
8689967
Though just as I laugh at people who use cheat codes for being bad(yes some use them for fun, but that won’t stop me from teasing), using magic means that the ponies tend to miss things a parson with even a basic understanding of science would miss.
8689827
While humans, because their lack of physical or magical advantages, feel compelled to find out and exploit every possible advantage they can find, like technological advancements?
"with Starlight, Dragonfly and a magic battery"
"with Starlight, Dragonfly, and a magic battery"?
Not sure if the omission of the Oxford Comma there was deliberate, so I thought I'd point it out just in case.
"Watney lets them do it because the notion of a dragon eating perchlorates inspired his curiosity too strongly for him to say no."
Ah, they told him what they were going to try? Hm. That does make more sense, but I didn't and still kind of don't get it from the text. It's not incompatible with the text, but it's not my natural reading, either. I think the issue centers on these bits:
"Go tell him we're doing a quick experiment in disposing of this pile."
"In fact, he didn't say anything at all when she told him about the experiment."
The first is the instructions to Starlight, which doesn't mention telling him what the experiment is and which I assumed she followed closely. The second is what's given about what she told him, and "about the experiment" could cover everything up from "There will be an experiment". A little more detail in either part would probably fix it, if you agree that there's a problem.
Have a good trip!
8689827
I'm reminded of Harry Potter and the Natural 20, a fanfic crossing Harry Potter with D&D by way of a D&D wizard, named Milo, being plane-shifted to Harry's Earth. Because of his young age (his player munchkinned the hell out of him), he winds up enrolled in Hogwarts, even though a major theme in the series, especially for the first book's worth of material, is that his magic and theirs have completely different rules. (For instance, Protection from Evil, a first-level spell, completely protects from the Imperius Curse - but he can't make even the simplest of potions, which almost gets him kicked out.)
The reason I bring it up is that he realizes at one point, as he's analyzing how best to take advantage of the conflict between rulesets (for instance, he can buy salt much cheaper on Earth than he could in his campaign setting, but rules as written he uses the salt's gold piece value when it comes to material components for spells), that the presence of magic has actively harmed the quality of life on his world. Without it, the people of Harry's world have had to continually innovate, while in his world the problems that magic can't solve just don't get solved.
8690089 I'm flexible on the Oxford comma. It never does harm to add it, but I often leave it out if the context is pretty clear.
And your other point is spot on. I would have caught it in an edit if not for the fact that the sentence in question was written DURING the edit. Fixed now.
dragons can eat rocket fuel.... watneys right we'd be doomed in any war.
8690025
Imagine how overpowered humans would be if an event suddenly altered them fundmentally to be as magically gifted as ponies. No technological and mental (maybe the more negative traits stemmed over time) attribute reduce. Just regular humans R&D gaining access to magic and the ability to abuse it.
8689895
Not that impressive, really. That comes to 1.25 tons per pony, up to 2 on flat ground with a well maintained wagon.
Since Kris is American, I'm assuming that these are not metric tons, which means this translates to 2500-4000 pounds per pony. Most automobiles fall into this range, and I've pushed a few around by myself. Of course, there's the mass of the wagon, too, but I don't figure it to weigh more than say, 1.5 tons, which only bumps our figures up by 750 pounds per pony.
Oh, and, wagons are much easier to move on firm ground than cars. Those big skinny wheels have a very low rolling resistance.
PLEASE tell me unicorns can learn things aside from magic!?
8689697
Great chapter; love the fact that there's something out there that even a dragon fines spicy!
8689625 Perchlorates: The Flavor Bomb! Also a regular bomb.
8690357
It's indeed relatively easy for a human to move couple of tons with pallet jack on smooth concrete floor of warehouse or car on asphalt. But Cherry Berry's experience is with Ponyville's dirt roads --- closest thing is second line from the bottom in the table (it's may be much worse if you try to move a few tons on dirt road). That begins from ~40kg of force per ton. Taking into account that pony is probably under 50kg (Mark was able to pick Starlight up effortlessly and run while holding two ponies) that's really impressive (although earth ponies may be bigger). Judging from the last line of table, it may still be ~order of magnitude worse on Martian soil.
8690359
They can. Starlight even states that the problem is largely who she is. If this was Twilight, her chemistry knowledge would mean she would LIKELY know what this was and why this was a bad idea.
Starlight however, is a self taught character. She is INCREDIBLY intelligent, given that with essentially no teacher, became good enough to make Star Swirl's spells even better, invent new magic and fight Twilight Sparkle to a standstill.
But it means her knowledge is likewise very narrow and focused. She knows magic. She is very good at magic. But things like languages, Maths, Science, history, and social studies (although she is working on that last one, student of the Princess of Friendship after all) she hasn't had a teacher to learn, nor the motivation to put her incredible intellect towards the issue.
8689753
Ah, the Demon Core, as it was known. A subcritical plutonium core that had not one, but two criticality incidents that killed dozens of people, including the aforementioned jackass with a screwdriver.
Actually, the entire mass was incapable of going critical by itself: The screwdriver in question kept the two halves of a neutron reflector from closing around the Core and starting a chain reaction, a wholly unapproved protocol that Enrico Fermi coined “tickling the dragon’s tail,” claiming they’d all be dead within a year if they kept doing it (they were).
You were even closer than you thought!
8689873 Remember too that the *bottom* of the pile will be exposed to soil moisture and chemicals, which would be more complicated than atmospheric moisture.
8690625 I should leave notes for the amateur nuclear physicists here for the Demon Core and how it featured in a near criticality accident. (Wikipedia is my hero, although I first learned about it from a couple of 70s era library books. We had a fun school library. I *still* can't find a copy of Atomic Ernie and the two or three stories about him in our library about his adventures with the twins, Beta and Gama Ray. Seriously.)
8690549 It fits with the pony shop names. General Atomics Rocket Engines and Flav-or-Rite Perchlorate Sprinkles.
8690610
You raise good points. I'd forgotten this fic has them being so small. (Though perhaps lower gravity and adrenaline are factors as well?)
But as for the table you linked, I noticed an entry for car tires on sand, just below the one you mentioned, and as it happens, I was basing my comment on thoughts of pushing my own Ford Bronco on sand. It has a curb weight of just over 4500 lbs, which puts it within 150 pounds of the maximum weight per pony I got from Cherry's example. Admittedly, the table shows a slightly lower figure for the car tire on sand, but it is very close, and I notice it is not a range, and has fewer significant digits, which leads me to suspect that it could be higher than shown. What's more, I did not have the advantages that even a tiny pony would have, those being four legs to pull with, hooves which can dig in to the ground, and a harness to most efficiently couple me to the load.
I wonder just how small the ponies really are in this. I'm not sure any figures were ever mentioned. I tend to imagine they're roughly in the lower end of the range humans are in, say 90-190 lbs. but that might not fit here.
8690141
SOMEONE ELSE HAS READ HP AND THE NATURAL 20!
(I was going to post about the Demon Core, but I was beaten to the punch.)
8690236 Mark would be fine with that if only he'd get signal.
8690357 Right. I based the load on Conestoga wagons.
8690359 Unicorns can learn plenty aside from magic. Starlight Glimmer, for most of her life, chose not to.
8690625 There was another experiment, witness by Richard Feynmann, that involved dropping a hockey-puck shaped plug of uranium through a ring of more uranium. The two masses would form one critical mass for the period the one fell through the other.
8690650 *sigh* I want to track down Rivets and Sprockets by Alexander Key and the Space Cat series by Jason Todd, now. (I never did get to read the last book in the latter series...)
8690672 In my head the ponies weigh about as much as a 5'0" girl would, with Dragonfly and Spitfire on the lightweight end and Starlight on the heavy end. Even after months of 0.4 gravity, I figured that Mark's astronaut training would let him lift and carry 150 pounds of weight at a run for at least a short distance, given sufficient motivation.
This is probably a vast oversimplication of an idea fraught with various issues, but since they're on a planet with consistent sub-freezing temperatures, and now have a nearly inexhaustible supply of water, couldn't they just build Martian igloos? Ice cubes or molds of some kind, then use more ice to fill in any gaps, then pack it with Martian soil on top, then another layer of ice or two on top of that to make it air tight?
I mean, it'd be a ton of work, but so is the cave, and they could build the igloos right next to the hab. Plus, with enough igloos, you could even have more space than the cave.
8690672
That table gives coefficient 0.3 for "tires on sand". For 4500 lbs of weight it's 1350 lbs of force --- completely insane. I suspect that either the value from wiki is wrong or there was much harder soil under that car.
8690788
Like most things that are irresponsibly dangerous, that sounds awesome.
8690837 low air pressure with zero humidity means sublimination of the ice on the warm side, plus you'd need a *really* thick shell to maintain pressure, plus any martian earthquakes could crack it like an egg, plus it has to stay *frozen* on the inside which really makes growing stuff difficult. But yes.
8690147
Ah, righto.
Yes, that looks much better.
8687415
I wonder if there would be a feed back loop of some sort if it made that "life source" magic... Ehm. Probably something keeping them from realizing that dream in this fic at this time.
A quick note: the next chapter of Maretian won't be up until fairly late Thursday night. It's ten hours from my home to Birmingham, and there's setup and things and checking into my hotel room after that- assuming nothing goes wrong with my 320,000 miles on the clock van.
8689895
Have you ever used a pallet jack? Rolling a few tons of cargo on flat, even ground is relatively easy with enough bodies. Lifting it yourself is not. That's what the sturdy, well-made cart is there for.
Edit: Late to the party. Sorry.
8689661
Now you're thinking with
portalsrockets!8690622
A scholar with will and a goal can do great things.
A wizard with will and a goal can break things fantastically.
A scholarly wizard with spare time can cause great worry.
Dr. Robotnik, given time, can conquer worlds.
Imagine Starlight Glimmer with the resources Robotnik had at his command. For context, watch this:
https://youtu.be/GJqZlkTHkDg
8690788
Will Mark have to do rehab after coming back to Earth, just to be able to endure the planet gravity again?