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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.

 

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Beer on Mars

Capitalism in space: Budweiser’s goal to eventually brew beer on Mars will take its next step with the launch to ISS of a beer experiment in December.

To get the ball rolling, the famous beer brand is partnering with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the ISS U.S. National Laboratories, and Space Tango, a payload development company that operates two commercial research facilities within the National Laboratory.

Working with Budweiser’s innovation team, the group will send two barley-based experiments to the ISS as part of the next SpaceX cargo supply mission, scheduled for December 4. Budweiser’s barley seeds will stay in orbit for around a month before returning to Earth for analysis.

Seems right to me.

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

8 comments

  • Cotour

    Now Glock or Winchester has to announce the same and everything will be set, firearms and alcohol being the only two man made items codified in the Constitution. What of the Second Amendment in space? There is talk of “Capitalism In Space” on BTB, how do these two foundation items fit in? 1. The right to defend ones self, and 2. The right to produce alcohol and the right of the controlling government entity to tax it?

    I have to wonder how the cost of establishing a brewery on Mars will be amortized and what the end product might cost per mug?

  • Garry

    As someone who enjoys good beer, my take is the further away they put the Budweiser, the better.

  • Max

    Beer on Mars? What could possibly go wrong?

    One newbie to Mars yells to another, as they are trying to impress the girls, “watch this!” As he jumps from the habitat trying to do three low gravity slow motion flips in a row before he hits the Sandune, overshoots and hits the solar array cracking his helmet instantly causing his beer in his rehydration tube to boil a froth in his face drowning him before he can suffocate…

  • Noah Peal

    In heaven there is no beer
    https://youtu.be/CuGZE0i1JqQ

  • Chris

    There’s a lot of material here, but let’s go with this…..
    If there is any intelligent life on Mars we’re doomed at their first taste of one of those Budweiser lime ‘o Rita’s or whatever it is. After tasting that, they will see it as their galactic duty to wipe our civilization out!

  • Alex Andrite

    Neat subject ! But come on folks, what to ‘Name That Beer’?

  • wayne

    Cream –
    Falstaff, the thirst slaker
    https://youtu.be/5Z9tXP5IsRg
    1:05

  • Garry

    Thanks for that, Wayne; if I still had vinyl I would have worn out several of Cream’s albums by now, but I had never heard that song.

    As the first comment at the link mentions, you have to wonder why Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds because they were too commercial, then he recorded this with Cream.

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