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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


March 9, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

Embedded below the fold in two parts. I especially like John Batchelor’s titles for each part: 1.Will the Trump administration shut down SLS? 2. Jupiter is completely different than anything else.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

2 comments

  • Localfluff

    While Cassini has shown that Saturn has got a polar hexagon, Juno has shown that Jupiter has an octagon at one pole and a pentagon at the other. On Jupiter the patterns aren’t continuous but connect circular storms. Remarkable. Reminds me of Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographicum where he tries to fit the six Platonic symmetric polyhedrons to the then known properties of the planets.

  • Richard M

    You’re almost certainly right, Bob: SLS does not seem to be in immediate danger of being killed off. Still too much political support for it; Trump has too many more urgent needs to deploy his limited political capital on. But SLS defenders are clearly worried. I can’t recall any surge on this scale of SLS defenses pieces like we have seen in recent months.

    One political dynamic that does worry me a little, however, is one identified by Eric Berger at Ars Technica some months ago. Old Space firms do seem to have picked up on the unpopularity of key New Space titans like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on the populist (i.e., Trumpian) Right, and they’ve seemingly been fanning these flames in recent months. They perceive them as having lefty politics (which is true to some degree, especially of Bezos) and globalist sympathies – if you have any doubt, simply look at the combox under any Musk- or Bezos related story at Breitbart. (Never mind that LockMart and Boeing execs and managers are hardly staunch populists, either.) The idea of empowering them further with government contracts, even of the fixed cost variety, immediately pushes certain buttons. Given the influence such cohorts have in Washington now, it’s cause for concern that it could help extend the life of SLS beyond what it might otherwise obtain.

    All of which is why Trump’s remarks are valuable. He has a credibility with these cohorts that no one else does to date. It’s not going to eliminate anti-Musk/Bezos antipathies on the Right, but it may take some of the edge off.

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