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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

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Delays in NASA heavy-lift rocket plan stir skeptics

More proof it’s nothing but pork: Witnesses at House committee hearing express strong concerns about the heavy-lift rocket plan (the-program-formerly-called-Constellation) imposed on NASA by Congress.. Key quote:

“We simply do not know what is next,” said Maser, president of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, which builds the space shuttle’s main engines. “We are in a crisis.”

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

  • Kelly Starks

    Bob I don’t think maintaining any remains of space industry in the US should be dismissed as merely pork.

    Maser of Pratt & Whitney, representing AIAA, was expressing (covered in more detail in other articles) the industries concerns that unless they get some business from NASA or someone soon, they will need to phase out all their space business. Note this has also been frequently been repeated by New Space folks in the New Space conferences (they largely gave up on developing new industries and are focusing no getting NASA support).

    So the US is at the edge of losing space, possibly even aerospace, industrial capacity. That is something congress actually should worry about. The US is deindustrializnig to much already.

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