(The following is a work of fiction, please enjoy) My dear friend, It has been a long time since my last correspondence. Allow me the moment to fill you in on what you have missed. We started our new space program without any major issues. Well, maybe some issues. Jeb, as you know is a little wild, vehemently volunteered to pilot the first sub orbital flight. The launch was a little shaky on liftoff but smoothed out into his gravity turn. After a brisk splash down Jeb returned babbling about wanting to go again. Some time later my team started putting together small probes to investigate the Mun. There were some great pictures from the flyby of the surface, however, someone let Jeb and Bob on the controls and they flew the probe at a two thousand meter altitude above the Mun's surface. The boss was not happy. Alex pitched the idea of sending a probe to another planet. He wanted to send one to Duna and return. Unfortunately the good idea fairy reared its ugly head and three other teams got a hand in the flight path planning. The probe launched spectacularly and set in a high orbit around Kerbin. It's first task was another flyby of the Mun with a follow-on flyby of Minmus. David's team made bad calculations that lead to an many course corrections and a lot of wasted fuel to get the intercept trajectory corrected. This is where we started to have problems. After Minmus the probe was scheduled to make another orbit around Kerbin to slingshot the craft into position for the transfer to Duna, but due to David's oversight there was not enough time to make the slingshot and still be in the proper position. A last minute decision was made to scrub the Duna flyby and attempt to intercept with Kerbol. Tensions were high when the call came down to start the burn. Unfortunately there wasn't enough fuel to achieve an impact trajectory and now we have a dead multi-million kerb tin can on a wild elliptical orbit and no one can do anything about it. It should go without saying that David's team was reprimanded. A second attempt at a Duna flyby was made, but this time they strapped on more fuel tanks and solid boosters at Jeb's insistence. Again the launch was flawless and the transition away from Kerbin was perfect. We waited a long time and watched the probe as it silently drifted around Kerbol and closer to Duna. About five days before we were supposed to start seeing a small red dot from the probe I discovered a problem. It was my shift at the monitoring station when I witnessed all the batteries suddenly drain and I lost all control. The probe was just lifeless. I called in the big think tank guys to try and troubleshoot the issue and that's when we saw the problem. Alex's team only put solar panels on one side of the probe and now that side was facing away from Kerbol. A projection was made and we saw that the probe would not regain power until three weeks after it left Duna. Again, Alex was devastated while Jeb made comments about letting him oversee the probe construction next time. We are currently working on another Duna probe but my team is trying to convince the Space Committee to authorize an autonomous lander to visit Eve as that planet's transition window is coming up. We already have a working prototype of the lander built but Jeb keeps saying something about "more cow bell." I will write again when I have time, but for now I need to calculate how many parachutes I need for a smooth landing on Eve. Your friend, Jimmy Kerman Chief Engineer Delta Team
