August 17, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. 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.
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.
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.