November 18, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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.
Kudos to you, John, for “calling a spade a spade” and telling us what NASA is really doing with Orion… lying! I made a similar comment at Instapundit this morning, when that usually reliable source was waxing on about Artemis going “To the Moon and Beyond”! I rhetorically asked “Doesn’t anybody realize that Orion is not remotely an interplanetary craft?!” How about “Close to the Moon, but nowhere else!”?
The best spin I can put on Orion is that it might be a money-laundering scheme for a top-secret spaceplane that Lockheed built for the Pentagon! “Build a gold-plated Apollo capsule and we’ll pay you for a real space plane!!”
The beauty of Starship (which is the only way Artemis will put an astronaut on the Moon) is that it takes advantage of a lucky break of nature. Once you get to low Earth orbit (LEO), the solar system is yours – IF you can refuel! And to refuel in orbit of course, you have to have reusable tankers. Hasn’t some guy been going on about that?
Ray Van Dune: That was me calling Orion nothing more than a overweight, overpriced ascent/descent capsule. See this essay by me from 2016:
The Lie that is Orion
Ray Van Dune wrote: “The beauty of Starship (which is the only way Artemis will put an astronaut on the Moon) is that it takes advantage of a lucky break of nature. Once you get to low Earth orbit (LEO), the solar system is yours – IF you can refuel!”
How true! Getting out of the Earth’s gravity well is half the effort needed to get into orbit for any planet (although to orbit Mercury takes about half again as much as to climb out of our gravity well) or to escape the solar system completely. The delta-v required can be approximated from the values in the following link:
http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
What I don’t understand about this mission is why are they only let it orbit one (or is it one half) orbit? If you are testing out a new, unique orbit, why not let it orbit a few times? What’s the rush?
Darwin Teague: I assume your question is about Orion. There is no rush. The spacecraft is going to remain in space for 26 days, not one orbit. Engineers sent it on a course for the Moon during that one Earth orbit, not back to Earth.
It will be in lunar space for a little over two weeks, circling the Moon several times to test that unusual retrograde orbit that NASA wants to use with its Lunar Gateway station.
Thank you for the correction. I had misunderstood what is going to happen.
Hello:
Would it be possible for you and/or John Batchelor to inform me (us) about the exact Dates and Times (EST) that you will be appearing on the John Batchelor show?
I very much enjoy your appearances on this show; but unfortunately, it has been very difficult for me to determine the exact Dates ant Times (EST) you will be appearing on the John Batchelor show. Thanks!
Warm regards,
Brian
U.S. EPA
Narragansett, Rhode Island
Dr. Brian Melzian: My appearances on Batchelor generally air on Wednesdays and Fridays, though depending on the news cycle and the topic, sometimes they air on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The time during his broadcast is entirely up to John, and depends on how he can best fit all the different segments together. I myself don’t know when.
If you wish to reliably listen to my appearances, however, you need not depend on live radio. I post the podcast of every one of my appearances here on Behind the Black shortly after Batchelor posts it on audioboom, usually on Wednesday and Friday, following the evening pause those nights. You simply have to check BtB periodically to listen to them all.
Though as an employee of the EPA, I am amused by your interest. I have been very critical of the EPA for years, as it drifted farther and farther from its original mission of reducing pollution. Too often in the past three decades it had become what some have jokingly referred to as a watermelon, green on the surface but red (communist) on the inside. Its effort to define carbon dioxide (essential for plants) as a pollutant during the Obama administration was to my mind the worst example. I thus celebrated when Trump stripped it of power and staffing.