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The time has come for my annual short pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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November 15, 2023 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

5 comments

  • David Eastman

    I believe that a Russian cosmonaut might land on the moon in the ’30s. But it will be as a ride-along on a Chinese mission.

  • Paul Revere

    The web is all the Twitter that SpaceX has gotten final approval for the second starship test lunch, and will launch on Friday. What say you, Mr. Zimmerman?

  • Paul Revere: It might pay to read my website to find out. :)

  • Jeff Wright

    I always thought the Energiya-Buran stack looked futuristic.

    And now, a big RLV is about to fly that resembles Rocketship X-M….

    I never would have guessed.

  • Dick Eagleson

    An entire installment of Quick space links covering the badly faded glory of the once-formidable Soviet space program and the Potemkin PR of its sad Russian remnant. I don’t recall if this is the first such, but I suspect it will not be the last.

    David Eastman,

    The only Russian likely to tread the lunar surface in future is one who is either a naturalized American in the employ of SpaceX or a ticket buyer of passage to Luna via that company’s Starship. At the rate the PRC economy is rattling to pieces, it seems all but impossible that that nation will ever get even one of its own nationals to the Moon, never mind any representatives of its mendicant lunar base “allies.”

    Jeff Wright,

    Rocket XM indeed. Who would have guessed that Hollywood production designers of the late 40s and early 50s would prove better prophets of the future shape of real space travel than the aerospace engineers of legacy aerospace?

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