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My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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DARPA to build satellite repair robot

DARPA has started a new project to develop a robot satellite designed to refuel and repair satellites.

I wonder if this is linked to the satellite refueling demo that has been doing simulations of exactly this kind of repair work on ISS for the past five years.

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

2 comments

  • Local Fluff

    Satellites need to be standardized to be repaired. The Air Force is probably large enough to create their own standards, hopefully to be followed by others. But then there’s the problem with orbits. Spy satellites use low orbits with high inclinations. It is expensive to move between such orbits. GPS satellites are also out of the market because they have very different inclinations. The market is in geostationary orbit and private companies. A third problem is that the economic lifetime of a satellite might be much shorter than its technical lifetime. It will often be more profitable to launch a new satellite with the latest technology and higher capacity, than to repair or refuel an old one. It is so much cheaper and less risky to launch the extra fuel together with the satellite to begin with, than equipping it for refueling and then launching extra fuel separately and docking and so many things could go wrong.

  • Local Fluff

    Pushing failed satellites into a graveyard orbit should be an attractive purpose for an Solar electric ion propelled towing satellite in GEO. Given that there are some “property” laws which require satellites to clear the area when they malfunction or within a certain maximum time or to make place for the highest bidder or however.

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