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My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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A new company has announced plans to use the Gemini capsule design from the 1960s to provide crew and cargo capability to orbit.

7:09 pm

The competition heats up: A new company has announced plans to use the Gemini capsule design from the 1960s to provide crew and cargo capability to orbit.

“Since this is an existing and proven design we could begin construction six to eight weeks after funding and complete a flying prototype ten to thirteen months later,” said WestWind President Bill Jolly.

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

4 comments

4 comments

  • Steve C
    June 19, 2012 at 7:49 pm

    Gemini originally had advanced development plans thru the Blue Gemini path, but where are they going to put a docking hatch?

  • Joe
    June 20, 2012 at 5:39 am

    The Big Gemini Design had a rear docking hatch based on work done in the Manned Orbital Lab (MOL) program.

    http://www.astronautix.com/craft/bigemini.htm

  • Steve C
    June 20, 2012 at 10:00 pm

    I would not have thought of putting a hatch through the heat shield. If they are doing the Big Gemini, it is not a tested and proven design, it is an incomplete, untested, 40 year old design.

  • Robert Zimmerman
    June 20, 2012 at 10:34 pm

    Actually, this design was tested and worked. It was originally proposed for the Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) that the military was building in the early 1960s using the Gemini capsule. Though the program was cancelled before any astronauts ever flew, the heat shield concept was actually flown and tested successfully on November 2, 1966. To quote from my Chronological Encyclopedia of Discoveries in Space (page 55)

    According MOL designs, a manned Gemini capsule and laboratory would be sent together into orbit, with access to the laboratory through a hatch cut into the capsule’s heat shield and covered with the heat shield’s ablative material. This flight tested the hatch and heat shield’s combined ability to protect the capsule during re-entry. When the capsule was recovered the engineers found that the hatch had been melted shut by the heat of reentry, demonstrating that the design worked.

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