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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.

 

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Change’-5 successfully gets sample from drilling

The new colonial movement: According to the state-run Chinese press, Chang’e-5 has successfully obtained its first lunar sample from a 2-meter deep drilled hole.

After making a successful soft landing at 11:00 p.m. BJT on Tuesday, the lander started rolling out its solar panel wings and unlocking some of the payloads onboard to prepare for sample collection.

The lander first drilled a 2-meter-deep hole, digging out soil, and sealed it up at 4:53 a.m. on Wednesday [today]. Next, it will use its robotic arms to scoop up more samples from the lunar surface for backup.

If all goes right, they will collect a second sample from the surface using a scoop, and then the ascent capsule will take off tomorrow. It will then rendezvous and dock with the orbiter and return capsule.

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

5 comments

  • Skunk Bucket

    How come the Chinese are able to drill six feet into the moon, when the drill on our Mars lander can’t make it more than a couple inches?

  • Skunk Bucket: Good question. Remember however that the InSight drill on Mars was not made by the U.S. It is a wholly German project.

  • Gary

    Do the Chinese report partial success and/or failure when they are the sole source of information?

  • David Eastman

    I’m not sure I recall a report of partial failure from the Chinese, they definitely highlight their successes, and take care to hide failures as much as they can.

    This current Chang’e mission is pretty impressive, and while I’m no fan of the Chinese, I hope everything goes well. Even though this is something that’s been done before, there’s something to be said for doing it again with modern technology. This image they just released, for example, is just stunning, and I believe the highest resolution picture yet sent from the surface by far: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CihdxsRSe9By8O9UtHLWE8dG-Nq2JwWg/view

  • Marcus

    That’s a great picture. I really hope to see more activity on the moon soon.

    As far as drilling on Mars goes, I fully believe NASA is capable of drilling even much further. I think they just took a risk by not over engineering the probe and trying to cover all the possible scenarios. They saved some money and ill guess the mission wouldn’t have ever launched if they hadn’t. It’s always a trade off and they get bad press either way. I personally think the planetary missions are doing a good trade off between risk and reward. If nothing goes wrong ever, they’re over engineering and won’t accomplish as much. When probes miss their intended planets, they’re risking too much.

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