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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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Boeing this week revealed a new line of small satellites, the smallest weighing less than 9 pounds, for both military and commercial operations.

The competition heats up: Boeing this week revealed a new line of small satellites, the smallest weighing less than 9 pounds, for both military and commercial operations.

This decision tells me that my worries about Boeing’s competitiveness are unfounded. Moreover, the increasing shift to building smaller satellites will once again lower costs and therefore increase the number of customers who can afford the product. The result will be a larger aerospace industry.

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

One comment

  • Pzatchok

    Didn’t they already have this?

    I think they were to be used as short term low orbit replacement GPS satellites. To be used in case our regular GPS system was somehow shot down or rendered inoperative. Like from an EMP.
    I think they came as both sea launched and air launched systems.

    With a trillion dollars of defense spending and years of work already behind you of course you could look competitive against todays civilian market.

    But take away all the defense moneys and they don’t look all that great.

    They have hundreds of billions of dollars of private nonpublic research and the US government handing them other peoples patents in the name of ‘defense’ to make themselves look good.

    At least a large portion of NASA’s research is public knowledge and usable by private corporations. So at least some of the money spent on them can be utilized fairly by all civilian companies.

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