To read this post please scroll down.

 

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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it 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.


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.

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

5 comments

  • mkent

    ”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.

  • GeorgeC

    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.”

  • Max

    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.

  • Jeff Wright

    More of a can-do kind of broadcast.

    One of the dangers of trying to get funding is that yokels are convinced we already have flying saucers—a myth that plays to cost-cutters and program killers’ tightwad natures.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *