April 17, 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.
- View a NASA documentary describing its effort to identify potentially dangerous asteroids
It’s an hour and fifteen minutes long, so I admit I haven’t watched it. It is also touted by NASA as “gripping”, with the researchers involved “dedicated,” “tireless,” and “unsung heroes,” the kind of propaganda words that always turn me off. Nothing against these scientists, but it is absurd to describe them in this manner.
- Texas Space Commission awards another $26 million in grants to five companies
All five are small companies doing a variety of background work that makes the industry function.
- On this day in 1970 the Apollo 13 capsule returned to Earth, safely bringing its three astronauts home after a near disaster
The blackout period during descent lasted about 90 seconds longer than expected, which added one last teeth-gritting moment to this nerve-racking rescue flight.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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.
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.
- View a NASA documentary describing its effort to identify potentially dangerous asteroids
It’s an hour and fifteen minutes long, so I admit I haven’t watched it. It is also touted by NASA as “gripping”, with the researchers involved “dedicated,” “tireless,” and “unsung heroes,” the kind of propaganda words that always turn me off. Nothing against these scientists, but it is absurd to describe them in this manner.
- Texas Space Commission awards another $26 million in grants to five companies
All five are small companies doing a variety of background work that makes the industry function.
- On this day in 1970 the Apollo 13 capsule returned to Earth, safely bringing its three astronauts home after a near disaster
The blackout period during descent lasted about 90 seconds longer than expected, which added one last teeth-gritting moment to this nerve-racking rescue flight.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID 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. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
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.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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.
”It is also touted by NASA as ‘gripping’, with the researchers involved ‘dedicated,’ ‘tireless,’ and ‘unsung heroes,’ the kind of propaganda words that always turn me off.”
Even worse than that, it goes on…
”Witness the drama, the challenges and the triumphs of those on the front lines of planetary defense.”
I haven’t seen it either, and I don’t intend to. I’m an engineer, and the absolute last thing I want at work is drama. No good can come from that.
The documentary really showed a people having a lot of fun solving the problem of discoverying objects in our solar system and explaining how to do it. Some scenes of senate hearings too. But I did fall asleep and need to try the last 29 minutes again.
mkent noted: “. . . the absolute last thing I want at work is drama. No good can come from that.”
Indeed. You do not want an engineer to say “Well, that’s interesting.” Or worse ” That was unexpected.”
I think I made it halfway, I kept drifting off into daydreams. The guy observing from Arizona talked about how he got hooked on near earth objects while watching comets from southern Utah… Then I started looking him up to see if I know him or his family, from my childhood.
Here’s a sleeper, trumps science/technology secretary? They repeat his speech twice to make it an hour.
https://www.youtube.com/live/ud5TgxeDPEc?si=1OK4DPfLHqZ8-KQa
A friend sent it to me saying that the government is admitting teleportation, time travel, gravity manipulation… typical Internet hype.
He talked about our past technology leaps from the first airplane to landing on the moon to the development of supersonic aircraft… Trump is bringing back the technology leaps like the glory days. (I must’ve daydreamed past the part where transportation becomes teleportation). As for the future manipulation of space and time at the end of his speech, a sentence from every science fiction ever written.