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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
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


China to launch two payloads to the Moon

The competition heats up: On Thursday China plans to send a capsule on a mission around the Moon and back to Earth to test its heat shield.

The rocket’s upper stage, which will also round the Moon but not return to Earth, will also carry a privately funded cubesat designed to study the radiation levels during the entire journey.

Twenty minutes after launch on October 23, (at 1:59 p.m. U.S. Eastern time), the Long March’s upper stage will separate from the test capsule, and both will continue on a trajectory that takes them around the moon. The capsule will return to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on October 31. In early discussions with the Chinese, LuxSpace was told that the upper stage [carrying the private cubesat] would re-enter the atmosphere as well, but it’s now expected to enter a wide, looping orbit around Earth. The main battery is only designed to last 10 days, although it may go longer.

Radio receivers on Earth will be able to tune in to 4M’s signal shortly after separation, and will be able to follow it as it rounds the moon, coming as close as 7,500 miles to the surface. The payload also includes a radiation sensor that will take measurements throughout the journey into Earth-moon space. Anyone with the proper equipment will be able to receive the compressed radiation data and decode it.

Though this private mission is definitely breaking new ground by sending a small payload to lunar space for very little money, the article is incorrect when it states that this is the first privately funded Moon mission. In 1997-1998 HGS 1, a Hughes commercial communications satellite that was placed in an incorrect orbit by a Russian rocket, was sent on a wide elliptical orbit to fly past the Moon twice and thus use this sling shot effect to get the satellite into a usable orbit.

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

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