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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:

 

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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.


The Russians announced that they plan nine more Proton rocket launches in 2013, for a total of twelve.

The competition heats up: The Russians announced today that they plan nine more Proton rocket launches in 2013, for a total of twelve.

I note this to give some context to what SpaceX will do with Falcon 9 this year. SpaceX has just updated its launch manifest schedule, and if the American company does what it says, it should have at least six more Falcon 9 flights this year, for a total of seven.

Should these predicted launches all take place, it will clearly demonstrate that SpaceX has grabbed a significant share of the launch market, but that the Russians are also holding their own.

Note also that the updated launch manifest still includes the first test flight of Falcon Heavy in 2013. Very interesting.

Update: The Russians are also preparing to launch their new Angara rocket family, which will replace their older rockets and allow them to launch from their new spaceport.

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

One comment

  • Dick Eagleson

    Interesting indeed. The from-all-sources orbital/BEO launch schedule at spaceflightnow.com shows only three Protons scheduled between now and July 19, but nothing for the rest of this year. I’ll be looking for more entries/info to appear there – or not – about the remaining six putative Proton launches.

    As for SpaceX, I’d be delighted if they got seven F9’s and the FH off the ground this year. But I’m dubious. The spaceflightnow.com schedule has proven fairly accurate and shows the same five F9 missions upcoming for 2013 that have been there for awhile: the high-inclination CASSIOPE mission out of Vandenberg in July, then two geosync comsats, a multi-satellite launch of the LEO Orbcomm comsats and the third ISS resupply mission slated for Veteran’s Day, all out of Canaveral. The new SpaceX manifest shows the fourth ISS resupply mission as scheduled this year too. That’s new. But I seem to recall that the FH test launch has been showing a 2013 date on the SpaceX manifest for a long time now. It’s not on spaceflightnow.com’s list, though, and neither is the CRS-4 mission.

    I’d be, frankly, more inclined to think the FH might get off this year than that CRS-4 will. FH is going up out of Vandenberg and that’s a lot less busy a place than Canaveral. Plus, there are no ISS coordination issues involved.

    With the first Orbital Antares/Cygnus mission to ISS having been delayed until September, which spaceflightnow.com’s schedule has been updated to show, even getting CRS-3 up later this year looks iffy now because of docking port congestion on the ISS. The Dragons only stay about a month before returning, but I believe the Cygnus is supposed to hang around longer than that. Maybe if CRS-3 was moved up to next month, CRS-4 could be done in CRS-3’s current slot late in the year. Hard to see how the ISS juggles all that resupply traffic otherwise.

    Once again, though, I’d be absolutely delighted to be wrong about this.

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