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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.
 

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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.


Another Proton launch failure

Eight minutes into Saturday’s Proton launch, intended to place a commercial Mexican communications satellite in orbit, the Russian rocket failed and broke up.

The Russian launch failures just continue to add up. At this rate their ability to hang on to their commercial customers is becoming increasingly difficult.

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

7 comments

  • D. K. Williams

    Makes one wonder what the successful launch rate was back in the cold war days when launches were largely kept secret.

  • D. K. Williams

    BTW. Bob, this latest version of Captcha is terrible. Images are too fuzzy, requires typing an unreadable sentence, you have to identify things containing bread from several photos, etc. I am not a bakery expert.

  • joe

    Question about the possibility to hack into this rockets control system, what is the amount of information available for troubleshooting these failures if the craft is burned up in re-entry, How is it ascertained where in the chain of events this failure happened, and as D.K. Williams said, what was the cold war era rate of failures?

  • SteveM

    Given the apparent sad state of the Russian space industry do we need to be concerned about the reliability of the Soyuz vehicle? It has an outstanding record but one begins to have doubts. Does NASA have a plan B if our sole source transport to ISS fails? I’d like to see speedup of the American alternatives.

  • Gealon

    NASA? A Plan? Yeah, it’s call more pork.

    Joking aside, Dragon is looking like the only reliable backup and it’s still a few years out. There are the others playing with mini shuttles but I personally would never fly in a winged vehicle in space.

  • pzatchok

    The launch failure rates were much lower back in the cold war days.

    The Soviet people still believed their governments propaganda and were far more consciences about their work.

    Now they are into their third generation of techs doing the very same thing their grandfathers did on the same production lines. The quality and experience is all gone.

    Exactly how much pride could they have in the rocket systems they are working on when their highest tech electronics are bettered by western high school kids home work projects. Or when the best computers they could put on the rockets are bettered by Iphones.

    Failures at rates like this could only happen in a failing communist system. Any capitalist system would never tolerate bad workmanship on multimillion dollar projects. There would be far more quality checks all along the production line.

  • My software guy says that all you need to do is check the box that asks “I am not a robot.” Should be simple. Try again and let me know what you find.

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