[GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

TheLastDefender wrote:
Thanks for the advice. I think I'll go get started on the other two then.

You're welcome, and enjoy!

TheLastDefender wrote:This isn't related, but while I was out yesterday I stopped by a second hand bookstore and picked up some disc world books. Unfortunately they didn't have The Colour of Magic, So I decided to pick up what they did have. Small Gods, Soul music, and The Light Fantastic. Is it important to read these books in order?

Not really. You might want to read within a cluster in order (the city guard books, for example, work better if you read them chronologically) but a lot are stand-alones and there's very little continuity between groups within the 'verse. And even the ones with continuity are mostly all self-contained stories, but the long term character development works better and you avoid spoilers if you keep an individual protagonist's timeline straight.

O. Hinds wrote:

ketchup504 wrote:I always thought of the balefire missiles of the basic, impact-detonated, cruise variety. Like the Tomahawk, and Scud(IIRC). There isn't much need for them to be a multi-warhead design. It hasn't been referred to by Kkat AFAIK.

...And it is currently 5 in the morning. That'll teach me for going to bed before 11.

CRUISE. WE HAVE ANOTHER SUPPORTER OF CRUISE. (Re multiple warheads, it is a potential loadout for SACIIs, but multiple independent-trajectory warheads aren't supported, no. I think that, in your tired state, you got a bit confused...)

I had no idea what SACII was at all, actually.

O. Hinds wrote:[cruise vs ballistic]

I vote cruise. Why would zebras want something that goes through space? How would they develop the tech without a space program? Why would they bother with the expense of leaving and re-entering the atmosphere when Equestria is directly adjacent to zebra lands, instead of the opposite side of the planet?

Plus all the things that have already been said about the Equestrian response and defenses against those missiles...

TheLastDefender wrote:This isn't related, but while I was out yesterday I stopped by a second hand bookstore and picked up some disc world books. Unfortunately they didn't have The Colour of Magic, So I decided to pick up what they did have. Small Gods, Soul music, and The Light Fantastic. Is it important to read these books in order?

Hmm... The Light Fantastic should be read after the Colour of Magic, I think (it's a pretty direct sequel, if memory serves), but the others are fairly standalone, Small Gods especially so - it's linked to events in the others (and some jokes in the others), but it takes place significantly before the rest of the books, apart from the books that take place more or less outside of time, of course.

And read Guards! Guards! ASAP so you can get to Men At Arms and the other police stories, so you can get to Night Watch (my favorite - it was one of the darkest novels he's done, but it has a ton of extraordinarily memorable scenes and lots of cool existential drama). They're all pretty great, in my opinion, even the more formulaic ones. Other highlights (for me personally - everyone's got a favorite set of characters) in no particular order are Thud!, Going Postal, Monstrous Regiment, Hogfather, Reaper Man, and The Truth.

Spoiler:

Darn it, my Terry Pratchett fangasms have caused me to be ninja'd. Oh well! Regrets: I have none of them!

@O. Hinds
True enough about the gems... d'you think they had a way of recycling the spent ones, at least partially (I'm thinking like how the ponies ended up creating different sources of energy than coal, maybe the zebras found other ways around their original problems, too)? That might let them have more weaker, limited use gemstones for things like dirt freezing or enchantment of weaponry... alchemy could also work, if they had a large tank of easy-to-produce potion that was cooled to, I dunno, 10-20 degrees below freezing, and could be sprayed on the inside of a hole, AND was designed to alchemically have an extraordinarily high specific heat (and lots of natural adhesion once it came into contact with air... could be like icy napalm, come to think of it!). Of course, I might be thinking about alchemy wrong - so far, it's been shown to affect biology rather than directly go after chemistry in both FOE and FIM. Different levels of description, really.

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:

I really love Night Watch, but it's important to not read that one until you've seen all the other Guards books, or you will understand none of the brilliance. Probably the only other example that needs to be read in order...

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:

O. Hinds wrote:Words! Interesting words!

I think the "NO LOLWUTS" was used in place of a normal "lolwut" pear, because Kipper was having difficulty understanding the technical nature of your earlier post.


Thanks for the info on missile systems - ya never know when something like that'll come in handy. Well... sometimes you might know, actually. If you're thinking about intercontinental explosive strikes, for instance, you'd know that knowledge like that'd come in handy.

As for the robot systems, I'd personally encourage you to think with magic even more - getting to twist the laws of physics as humans know them could allow some interesting stuff. For instance, instead of water suction, why not have some sort of freezing talisman? I'm pretty sure they used stuff like that for the Big Dig in Boston (not talismans, obviously)... I think it also helped with the drilling or something. Here's a pdf: Link! It's cool stuff (pun unintended) even if it might not be ideal for the zebra's purposes.

Pretty much. While I do understand the basics of missile systems, I have trouble understanding why such detail would be required.
Keep it simple on a singular warhead on either timed/target designation sensor/altitude system (remember, magic can play a huge part in this) or on a simple impact detonation system.

This keeps it from getting too technical on details that really aren't relevant any more (unless they are going to become relevant again to the Hoof).


I mean, yes I love how Somber delves into things, but something like this shouldn't be something Blackjack cares to really take much consideration of UNLESS it becomes urgent to her/Equestria and even then, its more something that P-21 / Glory would take note of, rather then BJ herself.


edit: after reading the posts; I vote cruise. it's the only system that makes sense.
Perhaps the Zebras would've looked into the possibility of ballistic (note: looked into - not produced a whole range of working prototypes) which would explain why the M.O.A Thunderhead branch was worried about 'and from above' (threats) but it'd be a waste of time for the Zebras to go too far into it.

ketchup504 wrote:
I had no idea what SACII was at all, actually.

See the link in my signature, "The Missile that Won the War".

Sindri wrote:

O. Hinds wrote:[cruise vs ballistic]

I vote cruise. Why would zebras want something that goes through space? How would they develop the tech without a space program? Why would they bother with the expense of leaving and re-entering the atmosphere when Equestria is directly adjacent to zebra lands, instead of the opposite side of the planet?

Plus all the things that have already been said about the Equestrian response and defenses against those missiles...

THAT'S TWO! And, yeah, I forgot to mention plummeting ballistic warheads being much easier to spot and in some ways easier to intercept. They are ballistic, after all, and, while maneuvering units could be added, they could still be forced off-target.

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:@O. Hinds
True enough about the gems... d'you think they had a way of recycling the spent ones, at least partially (I'm thinking like how the ponies ended up creating different sources of energy than coal, maybe the zebras found other ways around their original problems, too)? That might let them have more weaker, limited use gemstones for things like dirt freezing or enchantment of weaponry... alchemy could also work, if they had a large tank of easy-to-produce potion that was cooled to, I dunno, 10-20 degrees below freezing, and could be sprayed on the inside of a hole, AND was designed to alchemically have an extraordinarily high specific heat (and lots of natural adhesion once it came into contact with air... could be like icy napalm, come to think of it!). Of course, I might be thinking about alchemy wrong - so far, it's been shown to affect biology rather than directly go after chemistry in both FOE and FIM. Different levels of description, really.

Re gem recycling:
Hm... Possibly, but I don't see it being an especially efficient form of recycling.
Re cold fluid:
BRILLIANT. Thank you very much! ...There's still the question of whether the added weight, volume, and expense of the fluid would outweigh the benefits, but I don't think that that one can be easily answered with the information presently at hand. In any case, though, we now have several good potential ways to dig the holes. Again, thank you very much. Icy napalm... brilliant...

Kippershy wrote:Pretty much. While I do understand the basics of missile systems, I have trouble understanding why such detail would be required.
Keep it simple on a singular warhead on either timed/target designation sensor/altitude system (remember, magic can play a huge part in this) or on a simple impact detonation system.

This keeps it from getting too technical on details that really aren't relevant any more (unless they are going to become relevant again to the Hoof).


I mean, yes I love how Somber delves into things, but something like this shouldn't be something Blackjack cares to really take much consideration of UNLESS it becomes urgent to her/Equestria and even then, its more something that P-21 / Glory would take note of, rather then BJ herself.

It's important for the background; a story set in a world that doesn't work is a story that doesn't work. True, none of the details may be even mentioned... but if that's the case, there ought to be no problem using my recommendations, since the details of the missiles don't matter to the story. If the details are important somehow (and I suspect that they might be, based on some things that Somber has said...), then it is vital that those details be right.




Another thing in support of cruise-only: Yes, the Zebras could have gotten ahold of the work done by the Equestrian space program, which would make development much easier... except that it's highly unlikely that the Equestrian designs don't use large amounts of gems and flux, rendering most of the work from there highly impractical for even one Zebra missile, let alone the hundreds they needed. Add in the risk and suspicion that work taken from Equestria might have some concealed flaws introduced by counterintelligence, and that hypothesis looks to me quite ready to be rejected.

Kippershy wrote:edit: after reading the posts; I vote cruise. it's the only system that makes sense.
Perhaps the Zebras would've looked into the possibility of ballistic (note: looked into - not produced a whole range of working prototypes) which would explain why the M.O.A Thunderhead branch was worried about 'and from above' (threats) but it'd be a waste of time for the Zebras to go too far into it.

Yay! Thank you!

Sindri wrote:

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:

I really love Night Watch, but it's important to not read that one until you've seen all the other Guards books, or you will understand none of the brilliance. Probably the only other example that needs to be read in order...

That's very true - it's also pretty important to read it before going on to the other Guards novels, for reasons of continuity. Very important book, that. Mostly for the character development and awesomeness, but there is some continuity, too.

Gah, now I'm getting all antsy for ketchup to get to it, this always happens when I recommend reading material to people. =P

@O. Hinds
Glad I could help! I once did a short story (of sorts) that had the main character dabbling in pseudo-scientific alchemy... 'twas fun! Decreasing the pKa of the citric acid in your orange juice and throwing it on a belligerent person. Anyway, let's see... you might consider an aerosol for the chill-potion, especially if weight is a concern. Expense would depend entirely on the alchemy going into it, I imagine - if it could be mass produced with relative ease, then it wouldn't be an issue, but if you start going with any sort of "reacts-with-air" effects or whatever, then you'd probably need to manufacture it in a vacuum or something... or maybe it could be made to react not with the atmosphere, but with helium (or some other gas that's better suited and isn't naturally in the atmosphere of the equisphere - I figured helium because it's clearly not too rare in Equestria, or else Pinkie Pie would have caused a terrible shortage by now), which would be the gas used to aerosolize the potion as well.

Honestly, in terms of chemical complexity, I doubt that such a potion would be as difficult to brew up as one that transmogrifies the body into growing bat wings... though that might operate on a soul-string level or something, what with the way consciousness is physically represented in PH. Anyway, I'm rambling. Good luck with this, and with the missiles! Relevant.

O. Hinds wrote:By the way, could we take a tally of the supporters of the Cruise Exclusive and Mixture/Ballistic Exclusive PHCC members? I'm worried about what Somber will decide to do... you know that she wanted the missile stuck in Hightower to be based on a Minuteman?! All the Minuteman missiles were three-stage, and all but the early Minuteman-Is were MIRVed. Somber claimed that fudging would work, but... no. I'm hoping that I'll be able to at least convince her to use some single-stage non-MIRVed design, but that still would have a host of problems (What is the point of filing the sky with clouds to protect the pegasus settlements if the warheads are falling down from space?). I did mention that all of the requirements she's given me (not too many so far, though...) would be easily met by the SACII, which has the benefit of being readymade and nitpickiness-tolerance-tested by a pair of enthusiastic physics/engineering students, but...

You are correct that the cloud cover defense* works fine for stopping cruise missiles but works horribly for ballistic missiles as well as the simple problem that ballistic missiles are hordes more complicated to design test and build. More importantly think about the time from Megaspell creation to weaponisation to designing and testing of the warheads and their use. If you've read up about the early American and Russian space missions you know about the fact that both sides blew up lots of rockets on the launch pad before being able to get reliable missiles. Hell the Germans had a 28% success rate on the V2s. IE for every four missiles produced roughly one worked right when they got it to the launcher facility (Comes from poor quality control and slave labor work forces). And of those that worked correctly less than half hit their targets due to either being shot down, having a mechanical problem mid flight or wandering off course.

*RE cloud cover defense
Cruise missiles work by all sorts of fancy gadgets that at the end of the day boil down to two things. One a navigation system work tells the guidance systems WE ARE HERE every .01 seconds and a guidance system to nudge the missile to make sure it's following the stored route. Cloud cover complicates the navigation issue and the second thing you've forgot about the cloud cover thing. Pegasus systems move, not much but if your trying to hit a city that can move and the only way to correct the targeting systems is to get a scout up there or sneak a targeting talisman in. Depending on how targeting talismans work the cloud cover could further complicate the usefulness of those talismans if the cloud cover acts like interference.

O. Hinds wrote:
On a separate but related target, I've been speculating on the best way to dig the 3x3x15m (lxwxd) pits for the launchers. It would probably vary with the exact characteristics of the ground, but I'm currently trying to decide between specialized robots (design(s) unfinalized) and a rather interesting species related to diamond dogs (design also unfinalized, though I've a better idea of them than of the robots), possibly with the assistance of domesticated molerats. Or some combination, perhaps?

Why dig silos for the launchers unless you intend to make them ballistic missiles? A simple cliff side rail tunnel setup works great for Cruise missiles, have them on train launch cars that can be pulled in to be re-armed or worked on then pushed out to be fired.

O. Hinds wrote:

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:Heck, you could even have a robot controlling the launchers, and have it have an apparatus to dig its own holes lickety-split.

Interesting idea; I suppose that having a mobile subterranean control robot would have advantages…
The automated triggering of firing reminds me too much of the Soviet Doomsday Ship, but… for highest-alert, it sounds like not a bad idea! I'm not sure what metrics it would use for determining that Equestria was firing, but I assume that such metrics exist

I don't think Zebra's would trust Robots enough to hand over their bale-fire arsenal to them. Remember this is Fallout, robots can be hacked by talking at them let alone what happens if you get a dedicated hacker inside the building.

O. Hinds wrote:
Incidentally, are you at all familiar with the V-3? It's not nearly so famous as the other two Vergeltungswaffen designs, possibly because it was destroyed before it became operational, but I believe that it's thought that it would have worked quite well if completed (well, for a given value of "well"; the thing could flatten London, but making any significant change to what the guns were aimed at would have required entirely rebuilding them). Interestingly, I ended up developing the staged-gun concept independently for another project of mine.

The V-3 (The A-9 to be exact) could have reached America but the guidance systems of the day mean it had a ninety mile average deviation when it got there. Never mind during testing they only got the first two stages working and never mind the warhead at that distance was anemic. In fact it ties into another thing I mentioned earlier, without balefire(Nukes) ballistic missiles are a horribly inefficient uses of resources compared to conventional bombers. The cost of delivering a conventional warhead at that distance is such you could building two B-52's and pay their crews ten year salaries out of the cost.

O. Hinds wrote:Okay, what do you lot think of this two-robot system?
Both robots are built on the same platform and designed to be flown in by rotodyne, though the cement may need to be flown in separately. Robot #1 is equipped with scoop arms for soft-material digging and the removal of rock debris and hydraulic hammer and explosive-planting-and-borehole-drilling arms for getting through rock. It digs a rough and larger-than-necessary hole, then moves on to dig another one while Robot #2 moves in. Robot #2 is equipped with suction-hose arms to clear water seeping in, scoop arms for making use of the materials left by Robot #1, form assembly arms, concrete-pouring arms, and concrete-planing arms making use of enchantments to quickly cure the base cement. Robot #2 lays a level base of concrete at the appropriate depth, assembles on top of it a frame of light, cheap, stamped-metal panels, and then fills in the area around the frame with concrete and excavation rubble. The frame ensures that the hole stays in the proper shape while the capsule is being flown in and also includes grooves to allow any fluids under the capsule to flow out as it's lowered.

Would not work unless they are digging a rather large and flag hole. Conventional digging involves a great big drill bit along with high pressure water to cool the spinning drill head and a suction system to get the waste water out of the hole as the drill itself brings up the rocks and derbies. Even in bedrock your going to have lots of dust and dirt from broken rock if nothing else.

Robot 2 sounds workable but Robot 1 would be unable to dig down for any decent distance before being unable to remove debris fast enough to ensure good dig speed. It might make a decent tunneling machine however if there were Zebras on standby to help it with the digging debris with a portable conveyer belt to pull the waste out of the work area quickly.

O. Hinds wrote:
THAT'S TWO! And, yeah, I forgot to mention plummeting ballistic warheads being much easier to spot and in some ways easier to intercept. They are ballistic, after all, and, while maneuvering units could be added, they could still be forced off-target.

Some ways easier and some ways harder. The fun thing about a real ballistic missile is that it's going fast enough that you can't intercept it with conventional methods like setting off a explosive warhead next to it, it's going fast enough to out-run the explosion. More importantly against ballistic missiles, ponies have the one thing missing from real world ABM, a good solid death-ray. Get a powerful enough laser with good enough targeting system and every single plane and ballistic missile becomes so much wasted crap. It's one of the greatest problems the airforce is working on. Once we have multi-megawatt missiles attached to a system as good as a simple conventional AEGIS system your going to be able to target and slag anything that crosses the horizon. Requiring lots of money spent on anti-radiation missiles that have a greater than twenty six mile range and can fly low enough to avoid AEGIS (Which is low enough it needs to be smart enough not to run into trees and powerlines)

But that's a fun side topic

O. Hinds wrote:

Another thing in support of cruise-only: Yes, the Zebras could have gotten ahold of the work done by the Equestrian space program, which would make development much easier... except that it's highly unlikely that the Equestrian designs don't use large amounts of gems and flux, rendering most of the work from there highly impractical for even one Zebra missile, let alone the hundreds they needed. Add in the risk and suspicion that work taken from Equestria might have some concealed flaws introduced by counterintelligence, and that hypothesis looks to me quite ready to be rejected.

Not to mention the missile designs for something designed to leave atmo and drop a satellite or put a mare on the moon are going to be pretty different for a missile designed to hit a nearby country. What they would do better than stealing missile designs is to steal missile designers which would help far more. Well trained missile scientists can shave ten years off your missile program. Look at the American VS Soviet Space race. We most of the German scientists and the Soviets were forever playing catchup long term because of it. They got Sputnik up first because it was a much higher priority for them, but after that the instant America caught up (America started 1945 to 1950 then pretty much sat on our hands till 1957) we surpassed Soviet efforts and never looked back.

Only for us to stop caring again and sharing most of our tech after the end of the cold war which is why private companies and China are the only people doing interesting things in space. It kind of also does not help our last four Presidents have made horribly shortsighted decisions in regards to our space program.

O. Hinds wrote:By the way, could we take a tally of the supporters of the Cruise Exclusive and Mixture/Ballistic Exclusive PHCC members? I'm worried about what Somber will decide to do... you know that she wanted the missile stuck in Hightower to be based on a Minuteman?!

...huh. I've got a mixed reaction on this.

My personal opinon: from the mention of the fins and such, I'd just assumed it was supposed to be a cruise missile. ICBMs typically don't need fins for stability, and dump any aerodynamic components on the way up anyway. Only the last stage and warhead take a ballistic path. And anyway, I don't really see how a missile falling from orbit could manage to land intact in the first place. It should be a pile of radioactive debris. Plus it went in through the wall rather than the roof, which suggests a low trajectory.

However, I've got a strong "hands off" reaction to telling Somber what to write. If she says it's a ballistic missile, it's a ballistic missile.

O. Hinds wrote:Incidentally, are you at all familiar with the V-3?

Yup! In fact, before the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had some plans called "Project Babylon" for a series of superguns that may have included a staged cannon that could put projectiles on suborbital trajectories to pretty much anywhere on Earth.

TheLastDefender wrote:This isn't related, but while I was out yesterday I stopped by a second hand bookstore and picked up some disc world books. Unfortunately they didn't have The Colour of Magic, So I decided to pick up what they did have. Small Gods, Soul music, and The Light Fantastic. Is it important to read these books in order?

Sort of. Discworld consists of several independent groups of characters -- the Wizards, the Watch, Death, and the Witches, primarily. Later on you also add in Moist von Lipwig. Each story is more or less independent, but the character changes that happen in each one are carried through to later books.

TL;DR: It's not "important" to read them in order, but you might confuse yourself if you don't.

One other note: The first few books don't have the nature of Discworld established very clearly. PTerry was still kind of getting his feet under him and some early concepts were later dropped. In particular, Equal Rites and Sourcery were quietly swept under the rug in later books.
Small Gods takes place about a hundred years before any of the other books, so that's a good one to read first. It's totally independent from any other books.

Cptadder wrote:Cruise missiles work by all sorts of fancy gadgets that at the end of the day boil down to two things. One a navigation system work tells the guidance systems WE ARE HERE every .01 seconds and a guidance system to nudge the missile to make sure it's following the stored route. Cloud cover complicates the navigation issue and the second thing you've forgot about the cloud cover thing. Pegasus systems move, not much but if your trying to hit a city that can move and the only way to correct the targeting systems is to get a scout up there or sneak a targeting talisman in. Depending on how targeting talismans work the cloud cover could further complicate the usefulness of those talismans if the cloud cover acts like interference.

This. The cloud cover isn't so much to stop missiles as to confound ground-based observers while they move their cities away from the pre-targeted locations.

Cptadder wrote:It kind of also does not help our last four Presidents have made horribly shortsighted decisions in regards to our space program.

True dat. They keep talking about how it's so expensive and has no immediate practical results when we need the money elsewhere, but if you look at the tech developed as part of the space program and spread from there, it's paid for itself at least five times over. Not to mention the effectively limitless (compared to the terrestrial supply) resources that could be mined from asteroids and such, and the fact that we can't stay on this planet forever with our population growth rates, and we'd need to have been working toward it for decades before we set up a major remote outpost to have any real chance...

On the plus side? Where the government chooses to do nothing, the private sector takes over.

Sindri wrote:

Cptadder wrote:It kind of also does not help our last four Presidents have made horribly shortsighted decisions in regards to our space program.

True dat. They keep talking about how it's so expensive and has no immediate practical results when we need the money elsewhere, but if you look at the tech developed as part of the space program and spread from there, it's paid for itself at least five times over. Not to mention the effectively limitless (compared to the terrestrial supply) resources that could be mined from asteroids and such, and the fact that we can't stay on this planet forever with our population growth rates, and we'd need to have been working toward it for decades before we set up a major remote outpost to have any real chance...

On the plus side? Where the government chooses to do nothing, the private sector takes over.

I've read the article before. Asteroids contain many RMEs and AMEs that we could use. The abandonment of reusable spacecraft is also a step backward.

An ion engine has been developed, that can reach Mars in a month.
Link

ketchup504 wrote:I've read the article before. Asteroids contain many RMEs and AMEs that we could use. The abandonment of reusable spacecraft is also a step backward.

An ion engine has been developed, that can reach Mars in a month.
Link

Yeah, I might have linked it a few months ago...

Those ion rockets are very shiny, at least in vacuum.
And for the initial escape, it's a short jump from the railguns the Navy's building to a kilometer-long cannon running up the side of a mountain that'll fire into orbit (yeah, it'll cost to build and maintain, and organics can't handle the acceleration, but fuel, water, and other durable supplies could be launched for about a hundredth what they'd cost in a standard rocket). It's no space elevator, but it should tide us over until the material science guys catch up.

The next few decades will be very good for space development, and the US government pulling out now would be funny if it weren't so sad...

Okay, I just finished getting up-to-date on Heroes. Bloody good sidefic. I love the characters. Wasn't it somebody from the feedback threads that writes it?
No One, if you're reading this, know you have my full approval. :D

ketchup504 wrote:

Sindri wrote:

Cptadder wrote:It kind of also does not help our last four Presidents have made horribly shortsighted decisions in regards to our space program.

True dat. They keep talking about how it's so expensive and has no immediate practical results when we need the money elsewhere, but if you look at the tech developed as part of the space program and spread from there, it's paid for itself at least five times over. Not to mention the effectively limitless (compared to the terrestrial supply) resources that could be mined from asteroids and such, and the fact that we can't stay on this planet forever with our population growth rates, and we'd need to have been working toward it for decades before we set up a major remote outpost to have any real chance...

On the plus side? Where the government chooses to do nothing, the private sector takes over.

I've read the article before. Asteroids contain many RMEs and AMEs that we could use. The abandonment of reusable spacecraft is also a step backward.

An ion engine has been developed, that can reach Mars in a month.
Link

Think I need to clarify something both in cost and what issues I have (And every other big fan of the space program has).
Now up until 2010 we had a program called Constellation which was for NASA a well run program and was on track to achieve all it's goals if over budget but reasonably so (The extra costs could be directly tied into feature creep from Congress)

A few months after cancelling President Obama announced he wanted to go back into space and his space plan in essence involved everything Constellation was set to do but take an extra ten years and involve a brand new rocket design no one wanted. He also tried to have it both ways on Man VS Robotic exploration.

But moving back a bit further we get President Bush II who started Constellation (Good) but hobbled it because he wanted more Space shuttle flights (bad) and started and cancelled several programs at seemingly random. He as well tried to have it both ways on Man VS Robotic exploration, but at least he did not cut NASA budget while doing so.

Moving back further we have President Clinton who made the massive mistake of trying to put together the international space station by Space Shuttle. It would have been a hundred times smarter and cheaper to send up the parts via conventional disposable rockets then send the Space shuttle up once with extra crew and supplies to build the entire thing in two months with all the parts rather slowly add parts over a decade. He also cut NASA budget and... you might be familiar with this tried to have it both ways on Man VS Robotic exploration.

I could go on but to be honest Bush I and Regan were great for NASA and the old Presidents even better since they wanted to you know... go to the moon?
To be blunt the Space Shuttle has over the last thirty years been a massive boondoggle. To soon, to small of a payload and in the end we could have been tossing a hundred tons into GEO every sixty one days had we spent the money on the Saturn program rather than shutting that down to move onto the supposedly smaller and cheaper rockets which never turn out that way.

I can not stress this enough Shutting down production lines on missiles costs little, but starting them up again costs massive amounts of money. If we wanted to build Saturn V's again we could not because the machine that did that literally do not exist anymore. Had we kept Saturn going we had the production line as such that every sixty days we could have had a new rocket ready to go, with triple shifts that time was cut to thirty five days with a 97% ready to fire on the pad rate. Further had the 1980s SW related expansion gone through we could have had a new rocket every 11 days and then it becomes quite possible to get the cost down to under ninety million a rocket at that rate of production. And once at that level it is quite possible to start talking Moon bases.

And lastly as far as cost, the NASA budget as of 2011 was 18.7 billion. Billion a lot of money unless it's government money then it's a drop in the bucket. We spent nearly twelve billion on the useless MRAP program, and nearly six billion on the wasted F-22 program. That's not touching the hundred and forty billion in related military procurement so we can outspend our nearest competitor (China) by over sixty hundred billion dollars. Yes we spent 711 billion in 2011 to China's 143 billion. If we just spend as much as the other top ten countries (576.5 billion) we could free up a 134.5 billion dollars from the budget. Like I said billion sounds like a lot unless it's government money.

Cptadder wrote:

I think we can all agree that the US government's spending policies are stupid. Anybody else remember the ~1.5 trillion "bailout" when banks started collapsing, handed directly to the people who caused the problem with virtually no oversight or restrictions on use? I personally look forward to the day that Google has offices on other planets and Uncle Sam is still here, struggling with massive debt and stagnant policies.


But I believe this has gone far enough into a sufficiently unpleasant topic that the discussion should be killed. So, over to discussion of the tech involved in current and future space travel, or speculation as to Stygius's (probably unpleasant) fate?

Sindri wrote:

Cptadder wrote:

I think we can all agree that the US government's spending policies are stupid. Anybody else remember the ~1.5 trillion "bailout" when banks started collapsing, handed directly to the people who caused the problem with virtually no oversight or restrictions on use? I personally look forward to the day that Google has offices on other planets and Uncle Sam is still here, struggling with massive debt and stagnant policies.


But I believe this has gone far enough into a sufficiently unpleasant topic that the discussion should be killed. So, over to discussion of the tech involved in current and future space travel, or speculation as to Stygius's (probably unpleasant) fate?

Why not both? Stygius will turn out to have studied the Equestrian space program extensively, because the Batcave has a large library of books that go into great detail about Project Horizons' early days and the pony-crewed spaceship. He will reveal that it is his ultimate dream to travel to the moon (which is of course sacred to his people, what with Luna and all).

Sindri wrote:


But I believe this has gone far enough into a sufficiently unpleasant topic that the discussion should be killed. So, over to discussion of the tech involved in current and future space travel, or speculation as to Stygius's (probably unpleasant) fate?

Right moving on
I predict Psychoshy and Stygius will get it on only for in one of those dramatic twists Psychoshy to shout out someone else name.
Irony says it will be Sanguine
Dramatic Irony says it will be Luna

And then he gets a boat dropped on him (Which then drops on Blackjack).
More seriously? I think he's going to die, not sure how yet, I'll know he'll be okay if he shoots Blackjack however.

CalamityWhen wrote:Okay, I just finished getting up-to-date on Heroes. Bloody good sidefic. I love the characters. Wasn't it somebody from the feedback threads that writes it?
No One, if you're reading this, know you have my full approval. :D

No One did pop up in the previous comment threads, but I don't recall having seen him on the forums here.

And it is a good sidefic.

I would like to thank Sindri for introducing threads of conversation with smaller words. I would also like to thank Overlong Analysis cobalt for

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:the Batcave

It's... I...

Batcave.

As for his fate, I'm betting either Ahuizotl (or whoever he calls in) or perhaps Whisper maim and possibly kill him. On the topic of someone else's fate, I got a feeling that either Whisper or Rampage are in for a harsh fall. I think only one of them gets to come out of Meatlocker with the same togetherness they had going in... considering how much togetherness she already had, that might not be survivable for Rampage.

Meleagridis wrote:I would like to thank Sindri for introducing threads of conversation with smaller words. I would also like to thank Overlong Analysis cobalt for

Overlong Analysis Cobalt wrote:the Batcave

It's... I...

Batcave.

As for his fate, I'm betting either Ahuizotl (or whoever he calls in) or perhaps Whisper maim and possibly kill him. On the topic of someone else's fate, I got a feeling that either Whisper or Rampage are in for a harsh fall. I think only one of them gets to come out of Meatlocker with the same togetherness they had going in... considering how much togetherness she already had, that might not be survivable for Rampage.

If Luna is the Batmare, I guess Stygius can be Robin? Or Nightwing, actually; that fits better.

I agree that I'm not sure how long Styg's gonna stick around... it still feels like he's just too together to be long for this world if he sticks with Blackjack. Best case scenario, Whisper decides to part ways with the group and stay with him to rehabilitate and find something worthwhile inside herself. It seems possible; after all, there's not much tying Whisper to the rest of them except that she's got nowhere else to go...

Rampant and silly theorizing:
Stygius takes a bad hit, one meant for Whisper. He goes down; she goes to him as Blackjack and Rampage and Lacunae finish the rest of the fight. At this point, things could go one of two ways: either Styg dies, and Whisper probably has a moment that will hurt like hell but leave her a better (or broken, or both) pony in the end; or he doesn't die immediately, and Whisper starts taking after her mother and tries to nurse him back to health (one assumes she mostly just gets in the way as Lacunae handles the healing). Either way, Whisper gets development and Styg is dealt with somehow (I'm assuming the injury is bad enough that he can no longer travel with the current group afterwards).

It's also possible that Stygius will take enough damage in the coming chapters that he fits right in with the rest. Like... Steel Hooves targets the Batcave or something, and he feels guilty for not having been there to defend it (also would be a potential case of Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome).

I also think that Whisper killing him is a disturbing possibility. She's not as together as she tries to pretend, not at all, and when Psychoshy lashes out, ponies get hurt bad.

Where did Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome ever first pop up anyways? I've been trying to figure that out...

Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome came from TvTropes, more or less, and in the show all of the Mane 6 have had an episode about it. AJ was the first, with Applebuck Season, but Pinky's is the most stand-outish, in Party Of One.

Ah. I guess, all things considered then, that Midnite had something akin to that in the RP?

Oh yes. He definitely had a case of CMFIS.

I thought CMFIS came from the "Pony Psychology" fanfic series.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too.