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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.


Cargo Dragon docks with ISS

The unmanned cargo Dragon that SpaceX launched on August 24, 2025 successfully docked with ISS earlier today.

At 7:05 a.m. EDT, the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft docked to the forward port of the International Space Station’s Harmony module. The spacecraft carried over 5,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory on SpaceX’s 33rd commercial resupply services mission for NASA.

It will remained docked for the next several months.

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

4 comments

  • Dick Eagleson

    Actually, this Cargo Dragon will be coming back around the end of September. Cargo Dragons typical stay at ISS only long enough for the ISS crew to unload them and stash what was brought up, then reload them with whatever downmass needs to return to Earth. The typically month-long stays are about what it takes to do all of the manual stevedoring and warehousing needed at a pace that doesn’t overstress the crews who have to do it. It’s only the Crew Dragons that stick around for months because they have to act as lifeboats should anything occur requiring a quit exit of ISS by all aboard.

  • mkent

    ”Actually, this Cargo Dragon will be coming back around the end of September.

    Actually, this Cargo Dragon will be coming back around the end of December. In addition to its normal cargo duties this Dragon will be performing several orbital reboosts, and those are done over time as the effects of drag build up to lower ISS’s orbit.

  • Ray Van Dune

    In addition to returning reusable supplies and experimental results back to Earth, cargo Dragons can pack hundreds of kilos of trash into the “trunk” section of the spacecraft, where it will be incinerated during reentry, along with the trunk itself.

  • Dick Eagleson

    mkent,

    Thank you for the new orthopedic shoes – I stand corrected. :)

    Ray Van Dune,

    Cargo Dragons have brought back trash, but inside the pressurized volume, not in the trunk – or at least I can find no evidence this has ever been done.

    It would be tricky to do given that there is no way to place anything in the trunk from inside the vehicle. Doing so from outside would require air-locking out the trash and then using one of the ISS’s robot arms to stash it in the trunk. I’m not sure it’s even possible to do the last of these things.

    But if you want to buy me a second set of orthopedic shoes, feel free to find a source and provide a link.

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