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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.

 

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Swedish engineer test flies human-carrying drone

A Swedish engineer, in his garage, has built a flying vehicle using drones and gasoline engines.

You have to see the thing to understand how insanely simple, crazy, and cool this is. For example, the whole thing is essentially nothing more than a seat surrounded by eight drones, their spinning propellers rotating only about two feet from the passenger.

But it appears to work, though the design is without doubt not quite finalized. I have embedded a video of one of his test flights below the fold. This was fortunately an unmanned flight, because about three minutes in the vehicle goes out of control and crashes.

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

11 comments

  • Joe

    Cool, experimental aviation from weed wackier engines! He is going to need a computer or microprocessor to create some sort of stabilization control in case of engine out or decreased power in any one of the eight engines. The stabilization problem would be easier with electric motors, but that adds weight and complexity. No matter, this is cool, someone tinkering in the basement or garage and building something!

  • Cotour

    Yes, the gas powered concept is a bit unnerving. One malfunctioning module and more than 12 inches off the ground and disaster is eminent. But a fun garage project.

  • The pilots seat looks disturbingly like a coffin. As soon as someone else builds one, they’ll start racing.

  • Joe

    When I go flying, I almost always take a pair of wings and some control surfaces, if this engineer is thinking of flying this drone ship, and I think he is evidenced upon the coffin chair, he had better have his insurance paid up, as a hobby to play with, this is fine, as a means of becoming airborn, there are better and even cheaper means to do so.

  • wayne

    -Am I the only one who thinks this is sorta like re-inventing the Helicopter?

    It’s cool and all, I will not deny.
    But I agree with Joe on this one.

  • Joe

    Yes, this wheel has already been invented, even helicopters have control surfaces, and very few have more than one rotor head, no matter what, with asymmetrical thrust, very little you can do to right the ship.

  • Edward

    Sometimes the journey is the object of the exercise. Sometimes people just want to tinker around.

  • Joe

    Edward, I’m cool with that, maybe he can improvise a control system that takes care of the obvious issues, he’s not using cheap stuff, as a private pilot, I think safety is an issue here.

  • Edward

    “I think safety is an issue here.”

    Yeah, he may have decided that it is a death trap. I also suspect that had he been on board, during that test, he would have set the thing on the ground quickly, when he started having trouble.

    Then again, some people do the craziest things, to fly:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters

  • Joe

    Oh yeah, I forgot all about balloon chair Larry, poor guy was awarded the onarary Darwin Award! Funny and not funny.

  • Joe

    Actually it’s lawn chair Larry!

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