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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
 
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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.


ESA successfully tests controlling a robot on Earth from orbit

The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully completed a test program, proving that an astronaut in orbit on ISS can control and operate a small robot on Earth.

Astronaut Luca Parmitano aboard the ISS [in 2019] operated the gripper-equipped ESA Interact rover in a mock lunar environment inside a hangar in Valkenburg, the Netherlands to survey rocks and collect samples. The two-hour space-to-ground test was a success, overcoming a two-way signal delay averaging more than 0.8 seconds and a data packet loss rate of 1% plus.

The value of this test is obvious. It shows that astronauts will be able to use small rovers and robots in remote operations, such as sending a probe down to the surface before landing themselves, or once on the planet sending that probe into dangerous terrain as a scout, while the astronaut stays back in safety.

At the same time, the robot used and the tasks it completed were all relatively simple. Moreover, the “mock lunar environment” was hardly realistic. A lot more work is needed before such a robot is functional in a real planetary environment.

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

  • David Ross

    “a real planetary environment”
    The planets and moons we got within 5.3 AU of our Sun, fit for orbit, share these characteristics: near-airless atmo, Mars or Moon g, covered in fine dust or snow powder, and baked with radiation. We’re ruling out using anything like this robot at, say, Venus.
    Although Antarctica “right here” might be interesting to interact with, from orbit. High orbit for line-of-sight, methinks. Unless we’re okay with the delays from a polar orbit.

  • Jeff Wright

    If only we had an ansible for telepresense-use in waldo-work.

  • Of all odd places to learn about sensory latency, I was gobsmacked by my latency sensitivity in Rock Band. My eye (TV) and ear (stereo) “what’s going on?!?!” latency is about 30msec. If the two desynch by more than that, it’s confusing.

    The game doesn’t let you adjust the physical feedback latency, but it would be interesting to test that, too. One supposes that with training, a person could get used to _some_ latency between action and result, but our proprioception systems are VERY old. It might require a great deal of training or natural talent at it.

    Are the issues with remote drone piloting publicized anywhere or is it all classified? Round trip fiber latency from Chicago to London is non-trivial (~200msec, right now; dealing with the slow speed of light is part of my job). Satellite links are much worse and pale in comparison to Earth/Moon.

    Still, a very cool experiment.

  • Are the issues with remote drone piloting publicized anywhere?

    The overall problem seems well known:
    https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21352/how-do-drones-overcome-latency

    Some the the posters are fairly clueless (it is the Internet, after all).

  • pawn

    “Some the the posters are fairly clueless (it is the Internet, after all).”

    Not just the internet. I had a NASA engineer tell me that we needed to increase the baud rate (the speed, as he understood it) because the Pad was a long way away.

    Hey, they’re in charge. What can you say?

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