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Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short 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.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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June 21, 2024 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

 

 

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

2 comments

  • Edward

    Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, has a tour of the new factory at Boca Chica, “Starfactory.” Elon Musk was the tour guide.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFqjoCbZ4ik (1 hour, part 1 only)

    Items I noted include:
    — The video was made before the most recent

    — Musk expects that Starfactory should be able to ramp up to make up to 100 Starships each year. He says they need a lot of them to colonize Mars.

    — SpaceX expects to make 200 Falcon upper stages this year and more than that next year. This tells me that they are still ramping up Falcon launches.

    — They discussed the problem of protecting the hinge regions, a little prescient of what did happen during the test flight. A worry that turned out to be an actual problem. Back to the drawing board!

    — Musk believes that transpirational cooling (an early concept, in which residual cryogenic propellant is vented as part of the thermal protection during reentry) may be sufficient for reentry from orbit, but it may not be sufficient for reentry from “infinity” (the Moon or Mars).

    — The number one biggest and toughest remaining problem is a rapidly reusable heat shield. This was the downfall of the planned rapid reusability of the Space Shuttle, in which the fleet flew at best 6 times per year rather than the expected 24 times per year.

    — There seems to be CO2 in the propellant tanks, and that freezes at both liquid oxygen and liquid methane temperatures. The clogging in the valves and filters seems to be frozen CO2, commonly known as dry ice.

    — Raptor version 3 will not need heat shields, but there is a lot of complex cooling going on inside the engine parts.

    — Starfactory is impressive in size. I worked in a big cleanroom, at one point, but this place is much larger.

    I got caught up in the video, so there is more to learn in this video. Part 2, not yet available, is the launch pad.

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