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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.


SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites; 1st stage landing fails

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched sixty more Starlink satellites, raising the number in the constellation to 300.

However, though the launch was successful, the first stage, on its fourth flight, failed to land successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. Watching the live stream, it appeared from a whiff of smoke on the edge of the screen that the booster missed the target by only a short distance. This is the first time this has happened since 2015 2018 (correction from reader).

That this first stage landing failure is the news story illustrates how far they have come..

The standings in the 2020 launch race:

3 China
3 SpaceX
1 Arianespace (Europe)
1 Rocket Lab
1 Russia
1 Japan
1 ULA
1 Northrop Grumman

In the national rankings the U.S. now leads China 6 to 3.

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

9 comments

  • geoffc

    You forgot CRS-16, where the grid fins hydraulic systems failed. It spun up, and they continued to aim at the water, since they could not control it to divert it to land properly.

    They recovered in the last second for a soft landing on the water a mile or two offshore of the landing pad.

    Core 1050, Dec 2018.

  • geoffc: You are correct. I have edited the post.

  • MDN

    Any word on the fairing recovery? I watched the summary clip at their site but it made no mention.

  • sippin_bourbon

    Cannot find any info on the fairings yet. I was a little disappointed.
    This booster was going to have the fastest turn around at 8 weeks.

    Was pulling for them, as that just sounds phenomenal. However they have shown that they are very good at learning from the failures.

    By the old school standard, “did the payload make it to the correct orbit” this was still a success.

  • Calvin Dodge

    The speed at MECO (7700 km/hr) seemed a little high to me. I wonder if the reentry cooked some guidance hardware.

  • Willi

    The view of the first few seconds of liftoff was one of the best I’ve ever seen…

  • sippin_bourbon

    Still no word on fairing capture.

    I caught a comment (tweeter, I think) that stated that if there is an anomaly detected, the booster will steer to avoid the landing barge, to avoid the possibility of damage to the vessel.

    Not sure if this is the case here, or wild speculation.

    I liked the launch angle too, at the start. Appeared to be a camera at the top of the retracted tower? Or maybe one of the grounding towers.

    What would be super would be a 3d feed on the next one, so I can have can watch with one of these fancy VR head sets.

  • Diane Wilson

    @sippin-bourbon, it’s the other way around; the normal descent path is into the water; if the entry burn and guidance are good, it will dog-leg to the landing spot. True for both land and barge landings. So if anything goes wrong, the default is “into the water.”

    What’s curious (haven’t checked for a couple of hours) is that apparently the first stage did a soft landing over water.

  • sippin_bourbon

    Okay. I get. A failsafe into the water, and if everything is green redirects to the barge.

    Result is the same, tho, this morning. All was not green, so it did not steer to the barge, and stuck with the default safe course. At least, that is what is being speculated.

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