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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.


Planetary Resources has raised $21 million

The competition heats up: Planetary Resources, the company that claims its goal is to mine asteroids, has raised $21 million to build and launch an Earth resources satellite.

They plan to create a 10-satellite constellation to provide this data commercially.

While everything this company is doing will eventually make asteroid mining easier and more effective, nothing they are doing now has anything to do with mining asteroids. Their first project was to build a prototype orbiting telescope to look for asteroids. This second project will sell data about the Earth.

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

One comment

  • Edward

    Mr. Zimmerman wrote: “While everything this company is doing will eventually make asteroid mining easier and more effective, nothing they are doing now has anything to do with mining asteroids.”

    Strangely, attacking the goal from the flank seems to be the way to go, right now, in order to fund long range plans in commercial space.

    Elon Musk made his money with internet innovation, which paid for starting a commercial space company — which is providing launch services in order to pay for the goal of a future manned colonization of Mars.

    Bigelow made his money in real estate and now has a company that is likely to provide us with many of our future space-based research laboratories.

    Planetary Resources is doing a similar end-around. It is financing its goal to mine asteroids with more immediate commercial sales: information.

    On a Mars-related note, and at the risk of changing discussion on this page away from Planetary Resources:
    It seems that SpaceX is planning on using supersonic retropropulsion with its Dragon flight to mars, in a couple of years, and will attempt to put Dragon on the surface of Mars.
    http://www.spacenewsmag.com/feature/why-nasa-is-hitching-a-ride-on-red-dragon/
    “But what’s in it for NASA? The answer might be summed up in two words: supersonic retropropulsion, a landing technology that the agency increasingly sees as critical to its own Mars goals.”

    As you may recall, in a previous post Matt pointed us to a SETI talk on landing Red Dragon on Mars, and the speaker talked about supersonic retropropulsion. It looks like SpaceX is planning to do this with their upcoming unmanned Mars expedition and NASA wants to hitch a ride with some experiments.
    http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/dragon-to-go-to-mars-in-2018/#comment-883097

    It seems that this is part of the payoff for NASA in getting information from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 reentry and landing experiments.

    “NASA has since gotten some data on supersonic retropropulsion, thanks to SpaceX. NASA monitored several Falcon 9 first stage landing attempts, as the stage’s initial reentry burn takes place in conditions similar to the Martian atmosphere. … Red Dragon will allow a full-up test of supersonic retropropulsion on Mars. [Mars program engineering manager at NASA’s JPL Rob] Manning said NASA hopes to get more information on just how effective that approach is, and uncover any interactions between the spacecraft and atmosphere that can’t be studied in terrestrial tests.”

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