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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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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


Crazy swirling Martian landscape

Crazy swirling Martian landscape
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on July 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this “Contacts between Likely Sulfates and Chaos Blocks.” That contact I have indicated with the dotted line. To the west the lighter terrain is likely the sulfate-bearing unit, similar to the sulfate-bearing unit that Curiosity has been traversing on Mount Sharp for the past year or so.

To the east are the chaos blocks, but I think that description is wholly inadequate. In truth, I haven’t the faintest idea how this terrain got to be the way it is. It is evident that a lot of dust and sand has gotten trapped in the hollows, leaving behind ripple dunes in some places, but why the higher ridges swirl and curve about as they do is utterly baffling.

Overview map

The white dot on the overview map to the right marks the location, on the eastern margin of a chaotic region dubbed Iani Chaos and about 360 miles west of the region where the rover Endeavour roamed.

In the inset I have also indicated the drainage on the western edge of Iani dubbed Ares Vallis, which continues downstream north, with its outlet into the northern lowland plains about a thousand miles away. The nearness of that drainage, formed from either a catastrophic flood or long-term glacial ice, suggests it might have contributed to the formation of Iani Chaos. Just as an hypothesized inland sea is believed by some scientists to have caused the chaos terrain in the drainages to the west, a similar inland sea could have done the same here. Glaciers could also have done it, in both places.

Thus, these strange formations could have been ground out from either fast-moving water or slow-moving ice, or maybe even a combination of both, over time.

Or not. I really have no idea. I am merely guessing.

The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.

 

Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuses to recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

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