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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
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.


October 28, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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

  • Ronaldus Magnus

    Since Robert invites other subjects in this Quick Links section, I just finished listening to some more John Bachelor / Behind The Black podcast episodes.

    It always felt weird, out of context when John Batchelor says “CBS Eye On The World.”

    See all of the B S is what many of us “see”, other than good podcasts.

    However, with the advent of Bari Weiss, will Robert Zimmerman be asked to participate more in CBS science world?

    Will we be able to retire See the B-S?

    One can dream

  • craig

    Bari Weiss is still of the Left. Her only difference is she wants to “obey the speed limit” in pushing The Message. I wouldn’t expect to see any changed bias in story selection or framing (the left’s main method), only fewer open calumnies and Big Lies which the public is able to check and rebut over social media.

  • Dave in Denver

    Maybe going the speed limit will give other perspectives a fair shake. It might be all we can ask for in a civil society. It’s something that has been missing since the 90s. The press were so agog with Bubba that they never recovered. I don’t know why of late that has been changing. Perhaps the right side of the isle has finally developed a bit of a backbone of late. Maybe The Donald is a contributing factor. Another idea is, like the communists of yore, they are aging out and don’t have viable replacement to keep The Agenda going forward.

    Not sure Mzzz Weiss is so much on the left. Like so many of us, she’s a mixed bag. What’s nice is that some of her clearly different, quire removed from the general template of the fully left journalist class of the MSM. She did “speak truth to power”, i.e., told the pantheon at the Grey Lady that perhaps they had no clothes, to really mix some metaphors.

    I find it ironic that the MSM types like that “truth to power” phrase, but otherwise they clearly have no such intent – if even comprehension of it.

  • Jeff Wright

    60 Minutes isn’t always propaganda–and the fact that they have older viewers tempers things a bit.

    One of the things I find worrisome are pointy heads playing around with these things:
    https://phys.org/news/2025-10-phage-genome-ai-analysis-world.html

    A.I. not that great
    https://phys.org/news/2025-10-ai-drug-physics-1.html

    A story of the risks of mirror chirality, virons as syringes–right up their alley

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