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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
 
Behind The Black
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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.


Watch SpaceX retract one leg from used Block 5 booster

For geeks only! The video below the fold shows the new equipment that SpaceX has developed to retract the open legs of a used Block 5 booster. This video shows them attaching the booster in a secure vertical position, then attaching cables to the base of the first leg which are then used to retract it back into its launch position against the side of the booster. The design is quite clever.

The design also shows how primitive the art of reusable rockets remains. Though SpaceX has clearly succeeded in simplifying and automating this process, it remains slow and complex. In time this will get easier, but right now, this remains state of the art.

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

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

6 comments

  • Jeff

    Apparently this was only a test, as the leg was lowered and all four legs removed yesterday.

    https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45842.msg1842074#msg1842074

  • Kirk

    Interesting. Makes you wonder if it was planned as just a test all along, or if something didn’t quite work right.

    I had wondered if any manual intervention would be necessary to ensure that the pusher (the small pneumatic strut hinged just below the large leg strut) would require any manual intervention to ensure that it made proper contact with the folding leg. I see that at 8:55 in the video a worker in a cherry picker leans in and adjusts the pusher angle slightly.

    What I couldn’t tell from the retraction video was whether they needed to do anything special to pusher (the smaller rod

  • Kirk

    Oops. Trailing partial sentence above is an editing error.

    In other SpaceX news from the NSF forum, one member is reporting that last week’s ASAP meeting revealed that “some undesirable anomalies were observed” during the first two Block 5 engine tear downs, and that SpaceX is making “a couple short term fixes” prior to the DM1 uncrewed flight test. I believe that many core watchers had expected the DM1 core, # B1051, to have left Hawthorne for McGregor by now. Perhaps those engine modifications have delayed it a bit.

  • Tom Billings

    “Though SpaceX has clearly succeeded in simplifying and automating this process, it remains slow and complex. In time this will get easier, but right now, this remains state of the art.”

    Indeed, this will be entirely disrupted, when the BFR Booster simply lands back in its cradle.

  • Kirk

    Back to the leg pusher, this Teslarati photo of the West Coast booster B1048 (from last Wednesday’s Iridium Next 7 launch) shows the stainless steel cup which the pusher bears against.

  • Edward

    Kirk,
    I’m going to go with the “planned as just a test” option. They did not seem set up to secure the leg to the body.

    When they install the legs, it is almost certainly not in the open position but in the closed position, so this is probably new territory for them.

    My guess is that they were there to prove the concept, to test the hoisting equipment, and to verify the methods and procedures. They may also be investigating what it takes to get that pusher to seat properly in the stainless cup during retraction.

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