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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:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


New San Francisco Bay Bridge nears completion

New San Francisco Bay Bridge nears completion.

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

2 comments

  • Art Harman

    Nice bridge, Bob! The shame of it is this new ‘American’ icon was manufactured with Chinese labor. Sure the assembly was American, but how many thousands of Americans could have been employed if we just used American companies to make the parts? Let’s hope they didn’t use counterfeit bolts and sub-standard steel.

    Sure its cheaper to outsource; you may have read this week how Disney got busted for sweatshop labor making their toys, and everyone knows of Apple’s sweatshops. It’s probably the same or worse for their steelworkers, and of course there are no labor/safety/wage/pollution laws to make the ‘China price’ fair and competitive with American workers.

    This is why our economy, so hollowed out by outsourcing, has such great troubles recovering: the skilled jobs aren’t there like they used to be. Recoveries don’t come from hiring more people to sell Chinese junk to each other, you gotta MAKE stuff, THAT produces national wealth and that is the point the Chinese learned from our incredible success in the 20th century. Result; their economy is prospering while ours slides towards second-rate status.

    This is the revealing quote the article didn’t think to expand upon: “On Sunday, the four final pieces of the span’s 28-piece deck arrived from Shanghai.”

  • I agree that it seems odd that Caltrans couldn’t find an American company to make the deck sections, but government contracts are let to the lowest bidder. It wold be instructive to find out if American companies are allowed to bid on Chinese government contracts.

    It’s true that to add value to raw material you have to make something useful out of it. But the Western world decided long ago that making things was dirty and smelly and just generally icky. And if hurts the environment. Far better to ship all that undesirable industry across the world where it can pollute someone else’s environment. Out of sight, out of mind; but we still need the products. .

    The Wikipedia entry on the biridge notes that the bridge has been under construction since 2002, and if it meets the projected openening date in 2013, it will be six years behind schedule. The construction time of the original Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge combined was seven years.

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