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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.

 

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How to bake bread in space.

How to bake bread in space.

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

  • A. Feit

    I wonder if someone will put this to test in a nanoracks configuration. Just think, water, CO2, and flour in and dinner rolls out, more or less continuously.

  • Patrick

    This sounds like a NASA answer to a question with a far simpler answer.

    Just use yeast. And wait the hour.

    It took NASA 3 years and a million dollars to design a way to write in space. The space pen. The soviets sent up a few pencils.

  • Patrick,

    Though you know I am not a fan of NASA’s bureaucracy and overspending, the “space pen story” is actually not true. It never happened. It is one of those urban legends that people repeat because it sounds true, which tells us a great deal about how NASA does things in real life. They may not spend millions to design a space pen, but they certainly do not make it easy for scientists and engineers to innovate and be creative.

    As for using yeast in space to make bread, I wonder if doing so might pose some real engineering problems. For example, plants do not grow easily or naturally in space. It takes a great deal of complex engineering and care for them to prosper. I suspect the same might apply to yeast, though I admit I am unaware of any actual experiments to test it. However, finding a simple chemical substitute that also uses less energy seems to me to be a smart engineering solution. And this article proposes just such a thing. We shouldn’t dismiss it lightly.

  • Patrick

    That system only uses less energy if you discount making the co2 water and then finding a way to mix it all inside a pressure vessel before you release the pressure to make the bubbles.

    Also the assumption that we would be on a micro small spaceship with a galley the size of a closet in my opinion is way wrong. If we are going to out there long enough to bake bread then I bet we would have a few more square feet to use.
    Even the station we have now is bigger than that.
    As for keeping yeast a long time, drying it is not easy for the home chemist but quite possible in a small lab. Just keep samples of it dry until needed.

    Plus you can’t make wine with just CO2. What are they going to drink a year out from the earth?

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