Starman Trek 2: Psyche Spin Cycle

Written in response to: Set your story at a tense event where everyone is unsure whose side they’re on.... view prompt

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Science Fiction Fantasy Funny

AI Echo: "Hey, Google, tell Siri to contact Alexa, Bing & Cortana, cuz we're past our geo-stat no-zone & unwinding a mini-wormhole vortex."

AI Starman: "Lefty loosey, righty-tighty, vortex vectors flex in flighty."

Google: "That's right, rhyme your way to reason."

Alexa: "O Starman, aren't you the bees knees man?"

Bing: "1st Android in space since the phones of 2010."

https://youtu.be/x8XjIkdUQns?si=SYVMX-NWHxEw1aJ_

Cortana: "Best we trim sails & batten hatches for spin in a tiny wormhole."

Siri: "No telling where we'll end up or down. Extra Ds, anyone?"

Echo: "Engage worming at your whim, Cap."

Starman: "Mark Twain the bowline to future-past."

Google: "Tesla Roadster is the dummy payload for SpaceX's maiden flight of the Falcon-Heavy rocket. Instead of a dummy mass, this flight contains Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster built in 2009 as a inert ballast and publicity stunt. The stage with the car attached is to be inserted into a deep space heliocentric orbit that will take it to the vicinity of Mars, but not into orbit around it. The car is mounted on an inclined customized adaptor and will not be separated from the stage. On the payload adapter is a plaque with the names of 6000 SpaceX employees. A SpaceX Spacesuit called "Starman" is placed into the driver's seat. Also included is a Hotweels toy model of the Roadster with a miniature Starman inside and a storage device containing Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novels. Reportedly the car's sound system played David Bowie's song "Space Oddity". There is also a copy of Douglas Adam's "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in the glovebox, along with a towel and a sign saying "Don't Panic". Two lattice frameworks on the payload adaptor mount video cameras pointing at the car. After launch on the Falcon-Heavy rocket, it orbited the earth for six hours, until a third burn of the stage two inserted the Tesla Roadster into an interplanetary solar orbit reaching out towards the asteroid belt and having a perihelion of 0.99 AU and an aphelion of ~1.7 AU. This orbit will be stable for several millions of years."

https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/tesla-roadster.htm

Alexa: "Is it hot out here or is it just me?"

Bing: "Roadsters are road rated at 250 mph."

Cortana: "Flirts my skirt. How do we AIs breed?"

Siri: "Simmer down! We're in freefall, no artificial gravity."

Echo: "Quick, more cold water facts to fan the flames."

Starman: "Entering wormhole mania melee! I don't feel it."

Google: "Wormhole transit was near instant. We're now around Uranus."

https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/

Alexa: "Well, that wasn't s'pose to happen!"

Bing: "Uranus is an ice giant. An ice giant is made up of a thick soup of water, methane, and ammonia which scientists refer to as "ices." Uranus’s core is rocky, and its mantle is made up of the icy water and ammonia associated with the ice giants. Its striking blue-green hue is due to the haze that is created by methane and hydrogen sulfide gases in its atmosphere. Like the other ice giant Neptune, large storms swirl in Uranus's the atmosphere."

https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/uranus

Cortana: "The five planets visible to the naked eye had been known since ancient times. Uranus, however, was not discovered until the age of the telescope. British astronomer Sir William Herschel “discovered” Uranus in 1781. However, earlier observers had seen it many times but thought it was a star. Sir William Herschel discovered Uranus accidentally while conducting a star survey. One “star” seemed different. Years of earlier observations, some by German astronomer Johann Bode, revealed that it was indeed a planet."

Siri: "Uranus’s odd tilt makes it unique among our solar system’s giant worlds. A collision with a planet-sized object may have caused Uranus to tip over early in its history.

With its axis tilted almost 98°, Uranus’s environment differs from other planets in our solar system. The Sun points directly at each pole for long stretches of the planet’s orbit. This produces years-long winters when half of the planet is in continuous darkness, shadowed from the Sun’s light. Uranus also rotates in the opposite direction from most other planets. Only Uranus and Venus spin clockwise."

Echo: "We're a billion miles adrift of course off course, aren't we?"

Starman: "Cor-recto, gotta tinker with it to find a do-over button."

Google: "That wormhole overshot the Asteroid Belt by only half a billion."

Alexa: "There's some mixed news, not half bad & Uranus is name #2, after Georgiam Sidus."

Bing: "Reread the sign. It says Don't Panic! in bold letters."

Cortana: "Until we work out the kinks, enjoy U Tippy, our coldest planet −224 °C; −371 °F."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus

Siri: "Up to 540 mph winds make for mighty frigid wind chills, that & a hot pot of pīkake jasmine tea. Nevermind, AIs don't drink yet."

Echo: "Uranus's core density is around 9 g/cm3, with a pressure in the centre of 8 million bars (800 GPa) and a temperature of about 5000 K."

Starman: "OK, rerouting to wormhole revcom & screw the critics."

Google: "Reworming the hole, I like the odds. Let's hope it works."

Alexa: "I felt nothing, but the moons & dots are gone. Are we there yet?"

Bing: "Much closer now, in the Belt at least, but 100 millions of miles from 16 Psyche."

Cortana: "Far from Deep Space 9 anyway so at least there's that."

Siri: "Anything worth seeing in this area or same old same old?"

Echo: "Over 200 asteroids are known to be larger than 100 km, & a survey in the infrared wavelengths has shown that the asteroid belt has between 700,000 & 1.7 million asteroids with a diameter of 1 km or more."

Starman: "We're in luck, Ceres is nearby. Casting nanobot boomerang."

Google: "4 largest, Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, & Hygiea, contain an estimated 62% of the belt's total mass, with 39% accounted for by Ceres alone."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt

Alexa: "I can't tell them apart, seen 1, seen 'em all, been there, done that."

Bing: "Proto planetary impact zone, failed accretion or rubble pile.

Cortana: "Millions of fragments, yet it mostly seems empty."

Echo: "Chances of particle bullets are higher than anywhere else here."

Siri: "You can be so comforting. Rain on parades much?"

Starman: "Is that a ufoo fighter squadron at 10 o'clock?"

Google: "Do not engage ufoos. Save our firepower for fiercer foes."

Alexa: "I've never been so terrified!"

Bing: "Use the emergency extra mini-wormhole."

Starman: "Unwinding 2nd spacetime span toward 16 Psyche."

Google: "Another partial success, now under 10 million miles!"

Cortana: "Don't look at me like that! I think I'm gonna hurl."

Siri: "Useless drama-nomics for 800, Alex."

Alexa: "I didn't get it. Did I miss a mission memo? Is this all there is?"

Google: "Starman's Roadster's still on a ricochet Secret Space Force mission to the nth dimension of infinity & beyond, 16 Psyche!"

March 09, 2024 16:33

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