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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

If you have been a regular reader and a fan of my work and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider doing so. I take no ads, I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands (most of the time). Thus, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. 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.

 

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SpaceX successfully launches commercial satellite

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has successfully launched a commercial satellite using a previously flown first stage.

They did not attempt to recover the used first stage as it was one of their older stages, which they are clearing out as they move to the final Block 5 version of the Falcon 9.

The top leaders in the 2018 launch race:

16 China
11 SpaceX
5 Russia
5 ULA

In the national standings the U.S. has moved back ahead of China, 17-16.

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 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

7 comments

  • Sayomara

    I seem to remember reading somewhere a while back the next Falcon heavy launch is going to use two block 5 side busters. If that is the case they will need a few. Which at this point only one block 5 has been recovered and that is going to be torn down for engineering reasons.

    Considering the slow roll out of the Block 5 it seems Spacex is having some issues. But I guess better slow and steady than your rocket blowing up. We haven’t heard anything about central booster for the next falcon heavy being tested either. Just seems a lot less news than we normally hear from Spacex. Or i could have missed it

  • David

    Sayomara, what is this “slow rollout” you speak of? One of the high level SpaceX engineers was quoted as saying the Block 5 development campaign was their most successful and fastest major project to date, beating all their previous upgrade and development cycles. They had a backlog of block 4 boosters in storage that they would obviously want to fly just to free up that barn space, and they are producing Block 5 boosters to take over once those are all gone. There is only 1 more block 4 booster left in the queue, after that it’s all Block 5. You’re assuming that they are “having some issues” because, what? This is actually looking like a quite successful and rapid rollout. Are you just anti-SpaceX, or have your expectations been raised so high that you just expected to see an instant conversion to nothing but block 5 launches every week once the first one flew?

  • Diane Wilson

    I believe Elon said he had only one more usable flight-proven booster in inventory. So they’ll need Block 5s for July manifest.

    I can believe that early Block 5s will get extra testing, but I haven’t heard anything about new Block 5 boosters at McGregor. The lack of news is curious.

  • Gene

    conservative

  • Michael

    Is a block 5 a block 5 without the new copv or in reality a block 5 test bed?

    Does anyone know the status of the new copv?

  • Diane Wilson

    Last rumor I read was that the new COPV would fly on the first Dragon 2 demo flight, in August.

  • sayomara

    David I was mostly talking about the delays with the BANGABANDHU SATELLITE-1 launch. The Launch was delayed almost 6 weeks. Clearly something wasn’t working right to have almost a month of delays. I would rather they get it right than something blowing up but there have clearly been delays

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