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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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 launches 23 Starlink satellites; landing first stage on drone ship in the Bahamas

SpaceX today successfully placed 23 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 14th and 22nd flight respectively. The first stage completed its 16th flight, landing on a drone ship off the coast of the Bahamas, near Exumas. That landing was the first ever to land in territory of another country. SpaceX negotiated rights to do so from the Bahamas to give it more orbital options launching from Florida.

The 2025 launch race:

21 SpaceX
7 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
1 Russia
1 Rocket Lab

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

4 comments

  • F

    Blue Origin may serve as competition for SpaceX, but it seems that SpaceX has far more on track than just the launch vehicles. It seems to be firing “on all cylinders”, including systems, processes, and the various agreements and licensing necessary to grow its business.

  • Ray Van Dune

    Watching the Grok 3 announcement last night, it seems like Grok may not only soon be the world’s preeminent AI, but also involved in the operational and strategic planning for both Tesla and SpaceX!

    “Blue Origin and ULA hardest hit!”

  • Edward

    Robert,
    You missed the Rocket Lab launch of an Electron, which happened about three minutes before the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch. So that was fun, watching both in different YouTube windows. For a while, there were two upper stages running at the same time.

    I’m not sure whether there have been two rocket launches to orbit, before, but there have been suborbital launches. One evening in the mid 1980s, I was hiking in the Sierra Nevadas when we saw a rocket launch out of Vandenberg, then a minute (or less) later was another launch out of Vandenberg. For a moment we wondered whether we should be worried for the survival of humanity, but Vandenberg does not launch attack ICBMs, just test launches.

  • Edward: Thank you about the Electron launch. Forgot about it. I would have caught it tomorrow morning but better to add it tonight. I will put it up as a separate post.

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