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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.
 

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4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
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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.


Virgin Galactic’s Unity makes second powered flight

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic’s Unity suborbital spaceship made its second powered flight yesterday, reaching Mach 1.9 and firing its engine for about 30 seconds.

The official company video of the flight is below the fold.


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

  • Col Beausabre

    So, they’ve gotten to where the Bell X-2 was in the mid Fifties (and, to be fair, credit to Boeing for the B-50 carrier aircraft)

    https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Bell+X-2+for+FSX&&view=detail&mid=6CA44ABAF027800F52BC6CA44ABAF027800F52BC&&FORM=VDRVRV

    To use an expression from my dad’s home state, “Richard Branson, more hat than cattle”)

  • Edward

    Col Beausabre wrote: “Richard Branson, more hat than cattle

    Hopefully Branson’s herd will grow larger than his hat.

  • pzatchok

    Watch the craft under power/

    It does not look stable. It was wiggling all over the place.

  • wodun

    So, they’ve gotten to where the Bell X-2 was in the mid Fifties (and, to be fair, credit to Boeing for the B-50 carrier aircraft)

    But are they doing it now?

    I understand what you are getting at but just because something was done in the past doesn’t mean doing it now is no big deal.

    For example: what about when we land on the Moon again? Sure we did it in the past but we haven’t in decades and the technology that will allow us to do so now, will be far more advanced that what we used before.

  • Edward

    I suspect that Col Beausabre understands that this is a developmental test that is a step in the direction of what SpaceShipOne already has done. They are checking out SpaceShipTwo’s performance and are working their way to a full mission profile. The wiggle that pzatchok noticed could be part of the test plan (testing out control), or it could be an unexpected performance issue. SpaceShipOne had a worse case of unexpected spinning roll on one of its flights.

    Second flight to space, first of two X-Prize flights:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXNkUNP75-Q (10 minutes, unexpected roll begins at 1 minute into powered flight)

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