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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.

 

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Elon Musk lays out SpaceX’s planned program for developing a reusable first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.

Elon Musk lays out SpaceX’s planned program for developing a reusable first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket.

The article also gives some additional details about the company’s first effort to control the reentry of the first stage after launch last week.

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

2 comments

  • Rodney

    He says that he’s going to bring back all 3 main segments from the heavy. As I understand their staging sequence, the core will be over mach 12 at separation and way way downrange. How are they going to bring that back? Now, if he says he will land that on a boat, that’ll make more sense.

  • Edward

    “How are they going to bring that back?”

    As I understand the plan, they will reserve about 10% of first stage fuel in order to expend it on the return trip. Once the upper stages have separated, the first stage will have significantly less mass to slow down, speed up in the reverse direction, and land at/near the launch-site.

    Likewise for the other two sections of the Falcon-9 Heavy.

    The article informs us that SpaceX has successfully overcome one of the main concerns about getting a first stage back down into the atmosphere, and that it can survive coming back down through the lower, denser atmosphere. Rockets are designed to take stresses from forces pressing on the nosecone. As far as I know, successfully coming back down without a nosecone has not been done before. They have also learned more about the amount of fuel that is necessary to do this. The lack of stability at the end worries me, however, but that should be easier to overcome than returning to the lower atmosphere.

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