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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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China releases images of Tianwen-1 on way to Mars

Tianwen-1 on its way to Mars

China has released several images taken of its Tianwen-1 orbiter/lander/rover by a camera ejected by the spacecraft on its way to Mars.

The images released by the China National Space Administration on Oct. 1 show the Tianwen 1 spacecraft traveling through the blackness of space. Tianwen deployed a small camera to take the self-portrait as it tumbled away from the mothership.

Two wide-angle lenses on the deployable camera were programmed to one image every second. The images were transmitted back to Tianwen via a wireless radio link, then downlinked back to ground teams in China.

In the images, Tianwen 1’s solar array wings and dish-shaped high-gain communications antenna are prominently visible. The white section of the spacecraft is the mission’s entry module and heat shield, which contains a Chinese rover designed to land on Mars and explore the surface.

The spacecraft is about halfway to Mars, and will arrive in Mars orbit in February. It will then spend several months surveying its candidate landing sites, of which there appear to be two, before releasing the lander/rover to the surface.

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

  • mpthompson

    It is pretty cool that China put such a mechanism in place for a self-portrait. Probably as much for marketing purposes as it is for engineering purposes. It seems the type of thing Musk would do.

    It would be useful and thoughtful if NASA was thinking of doing such a thing on the James Webb telescope given how expensive it will be. At least give the public a picture of what all the billions of dollars the money was spent on rather than artist impressions. Of course, to do such a simple thing NASA’s contractors would probably add 10’s of millions of dollars to the project rather than 10’s of thousands.

  • Captain Emeritus

    NOTHING the barbaric, murderous, Chinese Communists do is “pretty cool”.

  • Captain Emeritus: As evil as the Chinese rulers are, the engineers and scientists who launched this mission have still accomplished something grand and worthy of admiration. Let us not apply our righteous anger at their leaders and apply it to this entire nation. To do so makes you no different than that evil leadership.

  • wayne

    I’m sure some of the NAZI-technicians at the V-2 production site at Peenemünde were wonderful people, as well.

    Captain Emeritus-
    Well stated.

    Minuteman III launch animation
    https://youtu.be/S-V6MZlyCqE
    2:22

  • mpthompson

    NOTHING the barbaric, murderous, Chinese Communists do is “pretty cool”.

    Can we be sure the scientist/engineers who put this feature into the probe are the “barbaric, murderous, Chinese Communists”. Or, are they the innocent victims of the “barbaric, murderous, Chinese Communists” just trying to push man’s knowledge forward despite the authoritarian political circumstances they find themselves in?

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