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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.
 

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
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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.


April 25, 2017 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

Embedded below the fold. John and I had a lot to catch up on. More to come tomorrow.

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

  • LocalFluff

    Your fire is spreading, Bob. Ted Cruz wants to renegotiate the Outer Space Treaty:
    http://spacenews.com/cruz-interested-in-updating-outer-space-treaty-to-support-commercial-space-activities/

    China and Russia should get along with the US on a new treaty that gives the first lander generous property rights. Giving them return on their current space leadership.

  • LocalFluff: As I wrote in a different thread tonight, “I saw this story tonight. I haven’t posted a link yet because I need to watch the entire hearings first, and then plan to write a longer post about it. It does appear that my Federalist column struck a nerve. Or more likely I sensed the wave coming from many different places, and caught it at just the right time.”

  • PeterF

    Thank goodness the incredibly long gap in podcasts is finally over!

  • wayne

    Mr. Z.,
    I’ve only recently started to seriously ponder such topics as homesteading & legal frameworks for Space. (and to your credit, for raising them)

    Personally, a big fan of Austrian-bent economics (and early American colonial history) & have been digging at the Mises dot org site, which immediately branched backwards to the “Lockean Homesteading Proviso,” from his Labor Theory of Property.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockean_proviso

    in brief–
    “The phrase “Lockean proviso” was coined by libertarian political philosopher Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. It is based on the ideas elaborated by John Locke in his Second Treatise of Government—that self-ownership allows a person the freedom to mix his or her labor with natural resources, thus converting common property into private property. Locke concludes that people need to be able to protect the resources they are using to live on, their property, and that this is a natural right. Nozick used this idea to form his Lockean proviso which governs the initial acquisition of property in a society. But in order for his ideas of ownership of property to get off the ground and be cogent, he devised the criterion to determine what makes property acquisition just, which is the proviso. The proviso says that though every appropriation of property is a diminution of another’s rights to it, it is acceptable as long as it does not make anyone worse off than they would have been without any private property.”

    –Which is apparently hotly debated among the more anarcho-capitalistic views of a Murray Rothbard or a Walter Block.

    This is highly (highly) interesting & frames some of important aspects of the debate, and actually mentions Space.

    https://mises.org/blog/blockean-proviso

    Personally, I haven’t thought about all this to any great depth so as to reach any firm conclusions, but my default stance is absolutely on your side of the fence.
    For these topics especially, I believe it’s vital to learn from our past mistakes & successes and apply those going forward, with as little distorting influences as we can engineer. (cronyism & Statism being the biggies.)

    And, I also like one of your key points in the colonization/exploration of Space– there’s no “indigenous populations” at risk of exploitation.

  • Wayne: It is interesting to me that both I (in my Federalist op-ed) and Bigelow (in his testimony) expressed positions agreeing with the Lockean Homesteading Proviso. Homesteading is only good if the property claimed does not claim so much that there is nothing left for anyone else. I made this point by noting that we must structure claims so that they are not too large, or else we will make it impractical for others. Bigelow said a similar thing, while also noting that the Outer Space Treaty presently puts no limit on any colony base size placed on any planet, and that he fears China will use this to claim far more than we would want.

  • Orion314

    40 acres and a mule sounds like a good staring point ;)

  • wayne

    Extremely interesting Topic on a variety of levels.

    I was not aware of this “Lockean Proviso,” so it all goes on my List of Stuff for further exploration.

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