To read this post please scroll down.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

My November fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. As I noted below, up until this month 2025 had been a poor year for donations. This campaign changed that, drastically. November 2025 turned out to be the most successful fund-raising campaign in the fifteen-plus years I have been running this webpage. And it more than doubled the previous best campaign!

 

Words escape me! I thank everyone who donated or subscribed. Your support convinces me I should go on with this work, even if it sometimes seems to me that no one in power ever reads what I write, or even considers my analysis worth considering. Maybe someday this will change.

 

Either way, I will continue because I know I have readers who really want to read what I have to say. Thank you again!

 

This announcement will remain at the top of each post for the next few days, to make sure everyone who donated will see it.

 

The original fund-raising announcement:

  ----------------------------------

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.


SpaceX completes its 11th launch this year for the National Reconnaissance Office

SpaceX today successfully placed its 11th payload into orbit this year for the National Reconnaissance Office, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The rocket’s two fairings were both new, flying their first mission.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

162 SpaceX (a new record)
79 China
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 162 to 131.

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

5 comments

  • geoffc

    If you look at the schedule of flights, with three pads, and 3 ASDS’s and one of the missions (Above) was RTLS, they seem to be aiming for launches on Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat. That is quite impressive for one week.

  • Dick Eagleson

    geoffc

    It is impressive. The launch today was SpaceX’s 7th for the month. There are six more scheduled during the next 7 days. That would be 13 launches by the 16th of the month if schedules hold. There only seem to be four scheduled for the back half of Dec. But Starlink missions have a history of popping up on the schedule at fairly short notice. It would be nice to finish out 2025 with a new monthly launch record, but what will be will be. A new yearly launch record has long since been in the bag. The only suspense is about just what that record turns out to be. 22 more days will tell that tale.

  • Dick Eagleson: Right now I am like you almost more psyched by the competition between Rocket Lab and Russia for the most launches in 2025. It is very close, and all signs suggest it will be neck-and-neck to the end of the year.

    That it will even be close tells us two things: Russia is continuing its long decline, and Rocket Lab is on the rise. I am betting the latter will leave the former well behind in 2026.

  • GeorgeC

    The best thing Russia can do now is to transfer useful technology to start up companies in places like India where the possibility of future jobs exist
    I think I saw it here on BTB, about a very nice O2 rich staged combustion engine, which has been a Russian speciality for 50 years. As long as you have the chemical engineering capability to keep producing RP1 such an engine is good for decades.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Robert Zimmerman,

    Yeah, the only semblance of a real contest in the launch field this year is Russia vs. Rocket Lab. I’m inclined to think the recent pad mishap at Baikonur now gives RL a presumptive advantage. Next year, I think you are entirely correct – it’ll be RL over Russia in launch count by a lot. Russia will probably still orbit more mass than RL in 2026, but even that may cease to be true from 2027 going forward as Neutron ramps up its cadence.

    George C,

    Russia’s recent deal with India anent the RD-191M engine suggests Russia may already be in the early stages of selling off its Soviet-era legacy, piecemeal, for whatever it will bring. India will almost certainly also be on the receiving end of any future such deals as its space development and manufacturing infrastructure is less mature and complete compared to that of the PRC – the only other nation with a potential interest in such acquisitions. India, I think, is simply willing to pay more than the PRC.

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