Henry Casper was the President of the UCS, and today was an extremely bad day. The presidency of the United Coalition of States was, in many cases, beholden to the will of the many state governors, as there were laws in place to ensure that state governors had ways to overcome, and in some cases, completely circumvent, and kind of federal intervention. Each state even had their own privately funded militias, which drew away many volunteers from the UCS' actual army. There were only the barest number of federal laws currently in place, and the federal government was entrusted with very few institutions. President Casper had fought tooth and nail to establish a national space program, the Coalition Space Program (CSP), and now their astronaut was stuck in orbit around the moon with roughly 48 hours of life support left. This was a massive blow to the federal government's reputation. All he could do now was try and minimize the damages.

Henry sighed heavily as he drummed his fingers upon his desk, pondering how exactly to save William Kassner from a slow and likely excruciating death in the depths of space. Fourty-eight hours... There was no way they could ever arrange another launch within that time. The Gödel was the only space worthy ship they had that was capable of reaching Akheron, and it'd taken six months to construct the thing, and that was before the entire design process, which was likely going to have to happen again since the failure of three out of four rockets was not good design at all. He was going to have someone's head for this... But that would have to be saved for after this crisis was solved.

He thought to the matter of how many other nations currently had space programs. Sweihter, Sanctus, and Sanira currently, and the most they had ever achieved was to launch a few satellites into orbit. It was possible that they had their own plans and designs for a shuttle capable of orbit with Akheron, but it was impossible to know. There was also the issue of who to call. Sanctus and Sanira hated each other utterly, and contacting one would likely anger the other... Sweihter stood entirely neutral, but they were the furthest behind in their own program... "Fuck it!" Henry cried out, finally settling on a decision. "I'll just call all of them." He picked up the phone and began dialing the appropriate numbers.