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Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

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A spectacular Martian glacier

Overview map

A spectacular Martian glacier
Click for original image.

Mars appears to be a planet filled with past surface flows, none of which are active today but all of which came from widely different geological processes. Yesterday’s Martian cool image showed the hardened remains of a lava flow on Mars. Today’s cool image shows us what might one of the best examples of the kind of glacial evidence orbital images have been finding throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The red dot in the inset on the overview map above indicates its location on Mars, in the chaos region dubbed Protonilus Mensae that forms the central part of the 2,000-mile-long Martian region in the north mid-latitudes I dub glacier country. In this region almost every high resolution image shows evidence of glaciers, all protected by a thin layer of dust and debris so they do not sublimate away.

This particular glacier fills a canyon carved into the southern cliff of a mile-high mesa five miles by ten miles in size, and drops dramatically almost 4,700 feet in about four miles. In fact, it so epitomizes what glaciers look like that the camera team for MRO’s high resolution camera used a 2020 image to give a quick lesson on how to spot a glacier on Mars.

This 2023 picture was likely taken as part of a long term monitoring program. Though planetary scientists presently do not think the glaciers on Mars are active and moving, this assumption is not yet confirmed. Taking repeated pictures of this same glacier over time will eventually answer this question.

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

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

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