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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
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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.


August 17, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

Embedded below the fold in two parts.

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

2 comments

  • Localfluff

    Yeah, let’s go with John Batchelor’s idea and call the Chinese far side Lunar rover “The Winnie the Pooh rover”! To make the emperor happy.

    I hope that the Chinese Lunar mission in December is a resounding success, and that they land near one of the poles. That might put it on the White House political radar and make them scrap the FLOP-G to instead go for the surface. I don’t know whether it is a good idea to organize the space force as a separate branch of the military or not. But it seems as if Trump wants it that way to make the US space military ambition more visible and to use it in international politics, in the game played against Russia and China. A space race to the surface of the Moon might very well be attractive to him as a kind of bargaining chip. As a threat to China but also as a potential for cooperation with the friends of the US.

    I think that the emperor will not outlive Trump’s administration. Rational Chinese will get rid of him to save their fortunes and go for a mutually fruitful cooperation with the US. The Chinese people love money and trade, to see their (risky) investments grow. I’m lousy at East Asian history, but AFAIK aggressive expansion is not what the Chinese have been doing the last several centuries. They’re not at all like the Prussians. If they can feel safe with their coastal waters, I think that there won’t be much popular, or elitist, support for risking a war. US Soviet cooperation in space after Apollo is something Trump is certainly well aware of. A coordinated US-Chinese Lunar surface program would be a wonderful futuristic symbol for long term forward looking peaceful cooperation once the emperor is gone.

  • Captain Emeritus

    We won the space race to the surface of our moon in 1969.
    Open up the FP-45 Liberator production line from WW2 and send a few million units to Chinese insurgents.
    They’ll know what to do with them.
    Meanwhile, embargo and boycott ALL Red Chinese products to the U.S. until the communists are overthrown.

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