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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

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Boeing unveils its spacesuit for Starliner missions

The competition heats up: Boeing today unveiled the streamlined but snazzy spacesuit it plans to use on its Starliner manned ferry flights to and from ISS.

This tidbit though I think illustrates the new mindset, to make things simpler and cheaper and more focused on their actual purpose.

Boeing’s suit, designed with the Massachusetts-based David Clark Co., weighs about 12 pounds, compared to 30 pounds for NASA’s orange suits formally called the Advanced Crew Escape Suit, or ACES. …The “get us home suit,” as Ferguson called it, couldn’t be used for a spacewalk. It’s intended to provide air and cooling to keep astronauts safe during launch and landings back on land, and during emergencies, like if a micrometeoroid strike caused a loss of cabin pressure.

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

5 comments

  • wayne

    Interesting “The Space Show,” from a few days ago, wherein (in part) they discuss the lack of an appropriate space-suit, for the surface of Mars.

    (Musk can go to Mars, but he won’t be able to leave his capsule, for multiple reasons….)

  • wayne

    referencing my space-suit comment:
    Dr. Larry Kuznet, on the sunday 1-22-17 show.

    http://thespaceshow.com/show/22-jan-2017/broadcast-2849-dr.-larry-kuznetz

  • jburn

    Wayne, I was wondering the same thing. Does this type of suit come anywhere near to what is needed on Mars? Could the umbilical cord approach be used, much as we once used it for undersea diving, on Mars?

  • wayne

    jburn–
    This is way out of my bailiwick. (but that never stops me! ha)

    Oxygen & pressure are one thing, while heating & cooling are another entirely different thing, along with being able to articulate & bend leg/arm joints.

    Anything to do with fine-motor tasks will also require appropriate hand-gear.

    Gravity on Mars is not our friend, as far as space-suits are concerned. As I understand it, the suits used on the Moon would be too heavy to use on Mars.
    And apparently, one also gets dehydrated relatively quickly while actively using a spacesuit.

  • wayne

    I guess the only logical conclusion, is to start buying Iron-Man suits from Stark Industries.

    Suit Up scenes Iron Man
    https://youtu.be/ZMEHyrfoa7w
    (6:57)

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