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The time has come for my annual short pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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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