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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
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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.


America’s Iron Giants – The World’s Most Powerful Metalworkers

An evening pause: Heavy tech (literally) that makes everything go, was built with slide-rules and pencils — in feet, inches, ounces, and pounds — and still operates.

Hat tip Mike Nelson.

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

7 comments

  • Dave Walden

    That was fascinating!

    Being reminded of such incredible productive achievements, I somberly reflect at what we now take for granted.

    I am also reminded of Ayn Rand’s fictional epic, “Atlas Shrugged.”

  • Ray Van Dune

    It is interesting to contrast these mammoth presses with the Giga Presses used by Tesla. These presses are much lighter, although still massive, and are horizontally-oriented.

    Rather than stamping out iron parts from billets, they produce castings formed by the rapid injection of molten aluminum, allowing them to produce major auto frame sub-assemblies at a rate on the order of one per minute.

  • Robert Pratt

    3D printing is now leading another evolution of the same materials science. Pulse power too. So wonderful. Too bad millions oppose the very industries that provide their affluent lives.

  • Allan

    The TV show How It’s Made covers, over and over, a full variety of metal forming processes used to make the things of our world, large and small. They go exclusively right into the factory to show the machinery, workers, and robots in action. The segments are all short. I jump ahead to the ones that interest me.

  • judd

    “Atlas Shrugged” does not seem so fictional now.

  • Andi

    Not only did they use slide rules and pencils, you can be sure that they made considerable use of the SWAG method in design and development – and it’s amazing how close those initial guesses were.

  • Jeff Wright

    Some people just have a knack for things.

    My Dad, however, would shove me away from anything I worked on—on account of me being a jinx.

    He drove my Ford Fairmont to Indiana and back on a visit to his brother’s family.

    I drive it five miles the next day—and it strands me.

    Same thing with his truck. I walk past a lawnmower—it quits.

    My combination locker at school opened for anyone BUT me.

    I’m the better idiot that engineers warn about.

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