CKFN: Several hours later

Danford Kerman wandered through the halls of the space facility. He was still in shock at the speed at which the USKK managed to get a two kerballed spacecraft launched. The Caelus was still at least a couple of weeks away from launching! By C7's beard, how did they get a ship together that quickly? He would have to push the engineers extra hard to get their capsule ready for launch. Maybe they could cut a few corners on production, or reduce the number of unmanned tests. After all, the rockets launched so far were very well-built, and maybe the extensive testing was just slowing the program down? He'd have to talk to his engineers.

As luck would have it, as he walked by the break room, Danford saw a bunch of engineers sitting around, watching TV and drinking coffee. He was about to speak up and let them know of his decision, then he saw what they were watching. He'd seen the launch of the USKK's rocket earlier, and realized he was now looking at the landing. Uranus I had evidently orbited for a few hours before reentering.

Coming closer, he overheard what the engineers were saying to one another.

"Me? I'm surprised the ship even got up there in the first place. Using SRBs on a kerballed launch? It's insane! Unless you're really clever, your thrust to weight ratio is going to be all wonky."

"Yep, TWR leads straight to the g-forces on the pilots. Judging by how fast that thing went up, I'd say they experienced about ten at max Q."

"Ten gees? No way, they couldn't have pulled more than seven."

"I recorded the footage then measured the rocket's acceleration. It definitely hit over one hundred metres per second per second."

"Dilbrett, only you would record our rival's rocket takeoff footage, then measure the screen to figure out its acceleration profile."

"Hey, I was curious! Besides, you know what they say about 'knowing thine enemy' and all that"

"Quiet you two! The capsule just landed."

"Pff, they didn't even position the parachutes correctly. Look, the whole thing just fell over!"

"And look at that weld! It looks like they just strapped another capsule and SRBs to their original 'Kaether' design. Amateurs."

"Explains how they managed to launch so quickly."

"I'm more concerned for the kerbal inside. I mean, surely they didn't just weld a stock capsule on, upside-down, to their original design?"

The camera zoomed in on the spacecraft, and one could very clearly see that the kerbal inside was inverted.

"Well, I'll be…" said the engineer who had just spoke, in astonishment. The other engineers began talking quickly among themselves.

"Has anyone even thought of doing an upside-down launch?"

"Never, the negative gee forces would be too much, and that's with a standard launch vehicle."

"Minus ten gees…ouch."

"Yeah, that kerbal's never going to fly again."

While the screen showed that both hatches had opened on the capsule, only one of the two kerbals had emerged. The upper kerbonaut still remained inside the capsule. The recovery team's expressions shifted from smiles at the safe return of the spacecraft to concern, as they swarmed around the kerbal, lifting him out of the capsule and onto a stretcher. The news camera appeared to be too far from the landed capsule to see much more of their actions. A hush fell over the CKFN engineers as they watched.

The lead engineer, Dilbrett Kerman, spotted Danford, and made his way over to him.

"Danford! It's good to see you! I was actually going to head on over to your office with my opinions on the Uranus! To make a long story short, the USKK's rocket quality is certainly not improving."

Danford was shocked. "What? They've launched nearly double the amount of missions we've managed to! And in case you didn't notice, they just beat us at our own game!"

"Ah ah ah, I said quality, not quantity, and that makes all the difference. To be frank, the USKK builds terrible rockets, and this one is no exception."

"It looks pretty capable to me"

"Fine. Relatively terrible is a better way to describe it. Basically, while their rockets do work, they just don't have the engineering skill to get them working well. To be fair, this hasn't mattered so far; the current rockets are pretty much glorified fireworks. But as the rockets edge into Project Jupiter-sized vessels, I guarantee to you that things like today are going to go wrong."

"I told you, the Advisory Council will never approve Project Jupiter. It's best to just forget about it for now." Despite his dismissive words, Danford was interested what Dilbrett was saying.

"Yes, yes, but my point still stands. We can't keep launching these small ships into orbit. Besides, the USKK is still having issues. You may not have bothered to check, but I listened to the communications from the capsule, and there were a number of other things going wrong with the spacecraft."

"Like wha-wait a minute. Only the USKK ground control can listen to those broadcasts. How in Harv's name did you manage that?"

"If the ship's passing overhead and you know what frequency band to listen at, it's trivial. But that's not important right now. The kerbonauts on board reported flickering lights, fuses repeatedly blowing, that sort of thing. While it may seem like a minor issue, and was dismissed as such by USKK ground control, there is actually a more insidious explanation."

At this, Dilbrett held up a black-and-white photo, showing the interior of the USKK's VAB, where a team of engineers was installing a pair of batteries. Danford wasn't even going to ask where his Head Engineer had obtained this.

"As you can see, they're just sticking these batteries inside without any real care to where they go. I know you're not an electrical engineer, but let me just say that doing that is bad. Really bad."

"So their problem is that they stick batteries in places randomly?"

"Their problem is that they have no idea what they're doing. One can very clearly see from their very first rockets, that they build something, launch it, see what went wrong, then fix that problem."

Danford was confused. "How is that a problem? It seems like it's a perfectly valid approach."

"Indeed, for small, inexpensive prototypes, like their initial sounding rockets. It's fast, cheap, and gives concrete results. However, for larger ships, if you rely on your main design to do your testing for you, let's just say you're going to have a bad time."

"I'm sorry Dilbrett. I see where you're coming from, but I don't understand how this relates to the CKFN. From what you're saying, the USKK is just going to have more problems like today. I can't do anything about that. Likewise, you seem to have all this figured out. Just keep doing what you've been doing, it's been working well so far!"

"You have more power than you realize, Danford. You've got the President's ear, and have made a major mark on this nation so far. But you have to realize that we are forced to go where he tells us to. Rumor has it that the President wants to move up the first launch of the Caelus because of what happened today. We're still two weeks off from our first unmanned test; please do all you can to give us that time. If we're forced to launch earlier, kerbals will die."

If his head engineer's earlier words hadn't convinced Danford, it was this frank statement, combined with the silent plea within Dilbrett's eyes, which won the kerbal over.

"I'll do my best, Brett. But you've got to give me results."

At this, Dilbrett's somber expression changed to a broad smile.

"Oh, don't you worry sir. I'll give you the show of a lifetime."