To read this post please scroll down.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

My November fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. As I noted below, up until this month 2025 had been a poor year for donations. This campaign changed that, drastically. November 2025 turned out to be the most successful fund-raising campaign in the fifteen-plus years I have been running this webpage. And it more than doubled the previous best campaign!

 

Words escape me! I thank everyone who donated or subscribed. Your support convinces me I should go on with this work, even if it sometimes seems to me that no one in power ever reads what I write, or even considers my analysis worth considering. Maybe someday this will change.

 

Either way, I will continue because I know I have readers who really want to read what I have to say. Thank you again!

 

This announcement will remain at the top of each post for the next few days, to make sure everyone who donated will see it.

 

The original fund-raising announcement:

  ----------------------------------

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
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.


SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites, sets new record for Falcon 9 reuse, dominates the world in rocketry

First stage after landing for the 32nd time
First stage after landing for the 32nd time

SpaceX today launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket (B1067) flew for its 32nd time, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage. As shown in the rankings below of the most reused launch vehicles, this stage is now just one flight from tying the space shuttle Atlantis:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
32 Falcon 9 booster B1067
30 Falcon 9 booster B1071
29 Falcon 9 booster B1063
28 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

Nor will it be long before SpaceX’s fleet surpasses all the shuttles.

Meanwhile in the 2025 launch race SpaceX’s dominance is overwhelming, as shown by the leader board:

161 SpaceX (a new record)
77 China
15 Rocket Lab
15 Russia

To put some perspective on SpaceX’s dominance, it has completed more than twice as many launches as the nation of China, even though China has been trying to develop multiple launchers from many competing government-run or government-supervised entities. Even more amazing, SpaceX is beating the entire world combined, by a wide margin, 161 to 129.

In fact, even though China has two launches scheduled for today, one of which supposedly occurred a little over an hour ago but has yet been confirmed, neither launch will put much dent in SpaceX’s lead.

Furthermore, today’s launch of Starlink satellites now happens so routinely no one even notices. In the past week alone the company launched six times, putting up a total of 170 satellites. Though there are a half dozen other competing constellations that have begun launching (OneWeb, Amazon LEO, AST-SpaceMobile, China’s Guowang, SpaceSail, and Geely constellations), only OneWeb has come close to matching SpaceX’s numbers, but it has completed its constellation of about 648 satellites, a number far less than the thousands SpaceX continues to put up.

As for the rest, while SpaceX can routinely launch almost two hundred satellites in a week, the best any of those competitors have done so far is launch 150 to 200 total, and even that took months.

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

It is rare for one entity, private or public, to maintain such a dominance for long. And it isn’t healthy for such a single entity to be so dominant. The world needs competition. It is time for others, both in the U.S. and worldwide, to step up to the plate and produce.

Note that I’m not demanding we rein in SpaceX in some manner, the typical response of our government when a private company becomes too dominant. We are supposed to believe in freedom, and SpaceX has demonstrated its proper use to the fullest, to the benefit of tens of thousands of people whose jobs exist solely because of that success. The last thing we should do is punish them for this.

No, the answer to SpaceX’s success is more success, by others. The rest of the launch industry has to step up to the plate and begin hitting home runs. And there is no reason they can’t, other than a sad lack of desire and competitiveness that must change.

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

One comment

  • Direct competitors to SpaceX are very few on the global stage. What is needed now is the next new space launch companies with innovations that could change the game. Old Space gave way to New Space. Soon even that group will need to be surpassed by the next generation. If that doesn’t happen, things will begin to stagnate in new and more dreadful ways.

    The future of space is very bright as long as we give it room to grow, allow for more competition, and provide reasonable regulations. It is that last item that I think will trip the process up.

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