Ad astra per aspera -- Anon Guest
[AN: My old primary school motto was Per Ardua Ad Astra - by effort to the stars. If I read this correctly, this means "To the stars by breath" ::googles:: Almost. "Through the rough" not "by breath". Was I close?]
Groundbreaking travel, as the name suggests, is fraught with unforeseen perils. The first person to hang onto the back of a horse or an ox had no idea what they were in for. The first person to ride in a cart instead of leading it was likely the inventor of the seat cushion as a direct result.
Currently, the crew of the Zipliner are learning the perils of near-light travel. Beginning with - inertia's a bitch. During the acceleration process, the crew are pressed into their seats and only maintaining consciousness because an "overly concerned" engineer insisted that they each were connected to CPAP machines.
They weren't laughing at that one engineer now. They weren't very capable of laughing at all. Frankly, they were thankful that their plotted course was well away from anything they could bump into. If it weren't for the reflective shielding, they may not have had a ship by now[1]. The real trick, in the moment, was finding the strength to reach the controls before they hit anything significant enough to overwhelm the systems as they existed.
It was a close thing, slowing acceleration to the point where they could work the controls with minimal difficulty. The initial struggle to combat the equal and opposite forces was harrowing. They barely missed some planets, because those worlds were not where they expected them to be. The Zipliner had also just discovered light lag.
They barely made it back alive. It might also be noted that the Zipliner made it back at much slower accelerations than the initial flight.
They had a lot of notes for the dev team.
[1] All it takes is one micrometeor to ruin -and end- your entire life experience.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / ssuaphoto]
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