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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’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket fails at launch

China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket yesterday failed during launch, though no details have been released.

Kuaizhou 1A and Kuauzhou 11 are rapid response rockets derived from intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of placing satellites into orbit on short notice. Launches are managed by ExPace, a commercial subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation.

The Kuaizhou-1A is the smaller of the two rockets. This was its first failure after ten successful launches.

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

  • V-Man

    That rocket can also probably place a killsat in orbit on short notice, too.

  • Edward

    Friday was a bad day for orbital launches. The article points out that this was the eighth launch failure worldwide, this year. What a bad year the launch industry is having. So far this year there have been around sixty successful launches (I’m not really counting), so we are seeing a failure rate of about 12%. Some of these failures were in test phases, so it really isn’t as bad as I have suggested, but at ten-ish percent it is well below good.

    Scott Manley has some comments on this launch after saying quite a bit on the Astra 3.1 flight, including some nice photographs taken before the shutdown. He also has a second source video of Astra 3.1 taken closer and showing more.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2izFjTEBKQ (10 minutes)

  • LocalFluff

    Yeah, 4 Chinese launch failures this year. And it is especially noteworthy that an ICBM derived solid fuel rocket fails! In war, such a thing can change history.

  • wayne

    US Military tests LGM-30G Minuteman III w/ 3 un-armed re-entry vehicle’s
    August 2020
    https://youtu.be/gAg6pAmtLyI
    10:52

    “It is to be noted that the missile is tested 4-5 times a year and but the last time Minuteman III was tested with 3 reentry vehicle was on Apr. 25, 2018.”
    “Air Force and Navy personnel onboard an E-6B Mercury airborne command post aircraft initiated the missile launch.E-6B is an important component of this deterrent capability since it provides a backup option for launching the missiles remotely if other command and control nodes get taken out by a preemptive strike.”

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