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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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DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.

Salvage in space: DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.

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

  • I applaud this effort, but I seem to recall a time when we could salvage entire satellites from orbit.

  • Roland

    NEVER from anything beyond Low Earth Orbit.

  • wodun

    Orbital dynamics is the death of many a good idea. Anyone have any insights on fuel requirements and deltaV changes that would help or hinder this from happening?

  • Pzatchok

    By the time this gets started they would have been better off just making satellites modular.

    Put together like LEGO’s. Got a bad solar panel? Just replace the thing.

    And everything, and I mean EVERYTHING would have to be modular. As soon as you have any part other than the frame that is not replaceable you mine as well just make the whole thing custom. Because as, Murphy’s law will always take effect, that one custom part will be the one to crap out first.

    Now that would require a repair robot be in the same orbit as the satellite and have the spare part available.

    Granted you would have to be patient enough to wait for the robot to get to the satellite and that could take a year using a low low fuel orbit change but it could be done.

    Everything would have to preplanned and preplaced into orbit. Otherwise its just a waste of a launch.

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