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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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1st countdown dress rehearsal of SLS core stage scrubbed

The attempt by NASA to conduct a full countdown dress rehearsal of the SLS core stage, including loading its tanks, was scrubbed early in the countdown yesterday when engineers encountered problems loading oxygen into the rocket’s tanks.

An issue with the LOX chilldown process run on Monday meant that the LOX propellant tank couldn’t be filled, which meant that the full WDR test wasn’t possible.

NASA’s post-scrub statement indicated the vehicle systems performed well and that the Core Stage engineering community and the test team at Stennis were working on fixes and determining when the tanking and countdown demonstration parts of the WDR test can be retried.

This dress rehearsal is intended to preparatory to what NASA dubs the Green Run test static fire of the core stage, set to last for the full 500 seconds the core stage would fire during an actual launch. Whether this scrub will prevent that Green Run test from occurring before the end of the year remains unclear. Either way it must happen soon if NASA is to maintain its schedule for the long frequently delayed launch of SLS, now scheduled for November ’21.

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

2 comments

  • LocalFluff

    This is what happened, the planet Gods in the constellations (and plain experience) told me so:
    48321, 48320, 48319, 48318, ehum, 48318? 48315?? Oh darn!

  • john hare

    But it was someone else’s job to put the fill valve on the tank.

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