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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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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.


Chang’e-5 samples suggest lunar meteorite impacts took place the same time as big Chicxulub impact

In analyzing lunar samples brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 Moon lander, Australian scientists have found evidence of lunar meteorite impacts that apparently took place the same time as big Chicxulub impact in the Yucatan 66 million years ago, thought by many scientists to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Their findings suggest that the frequency of meteorite impacts on the Moon may have been mirrored on Earth, and that major impact events on Earth were not stand-alone events and instead were accompanies by a series of smaller impacts. The study has been published in Science Advances.

“We combined a wide range of microscopic analytical techniques, numerical modelling, and geological surveys to determine how these microscopic glass beads from the Moon were formed and when,” says lead author Professor Alexander Nemchin, from the Space Science and Technology Centre (SSTC) in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University in Perth.

The data suggests two possibilities, neither of which is confirmed. First, the impacts could have occurred because a cluster of large objects hit both Earth and the Moon at the same time. Second, the impacts on the Moon could have been caused by objects thrown up from the Earth when the bigger impact occurred at Chicxulub.

Either way, the data suggests a greater and more complex interaction between events on the Earth and events on the Moon.

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

6 comments

  • Gary

    Interesting. I just read a fiction novel – https://www.amazon.com/Tyrannosaur-Canyon-Wyman-Douglas-Preston/dp/0765349655 – based on the premise that moon rocks found by the last Apollo astronauts were found to be linked to the Yucatan impact. Took some fanciful liberties after that, but that book anticipated this data by nearly 20 years.

  • GaryMike

    Glenn Reynolds says: “It’s aliens”.

  • Gary

    Yeah, Instapundit was where is saw the recommendation for that book.

  • Tim

    Robert Zubrin, I posted this some years ago it might be of interest to you:

    “Elon Musk said elsewhere that he thinks that 500K a ticket is the price for being able to send people to Mars privately at a profit. He said that he thinks that there are at least 8000 and probably very many more willing/able to pay. Let assume he is right. How would the colony make money? How about: The Cayman Islands in space?. Mars has one big thing to trade upon, its location beyond all claims of any government as to sovereignty. Meaning it does not have to follow any earth laws. The colony bank of mars (probably a bunch of server/routers/cpu’s in a room) could offer clients tax free interest on deposits (say 5% more for big investors) and total confidentiality. Records not available to any gov agency wanting to know anything about, no legal obligation to do so.”

    This is similar I believe to what happen in early America; gold/etc deposited in the bank of NY or some such facility escape the tax man in Europe. In this application said money would likely be transferred electronically; the “bank of mars” would then invest the money back on Earth the same way and pay depositors interest tax free. Since sovereign private colonies on Mars (made up of people renouncing their citizenship from their native country on earth) wouldn’t be bound by earth law/taxes etc. No obligation to report interest paid to depositors to the IRS.

    https://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3383&p=73301&hilit=bank+of+mars#p73301

  • Tim: If you think you are commenting on Robert Zubrin’s website, you are sorely mistaken. :)

    Nothing against Robert, he is just a different Robert Z. He focuses on Mars, I instead write histories of what has been done, with an eye to the future.

  • Tim

    “Tim: If you think you are commenting on Robert Zubrin’s website, you are sorely mistaken. :)”

    Oops…my mistake. Any comments about my post anyway? Would welcome them.

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