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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. 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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Endeavour splashes down successfully

UPDATE: Endeavour has successfully splashed down, and crews are approaching to recover the capsule.

This by the way completes Endeavour’s third manned flight into space.

Original post:
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The SpaceX capsule Endeavour, carrying Axiom’s first commercial passengers, undocked with ISS last night and is scheduled to splashdown off the coast of Florida shortly.

I have embedded the live stream below, scheduled to begin shortly.

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

3 comments

  • Michael

    As a point of curiosity I wonder how the Apollo program dealt with this kind of contingency. I’ve never heard the point discussed but they must have considered the issue as those guys had no choice but to land no matter the weather.

  • Doubting Thomas

    Michael – Apollo had recovery fleets scattered across the oceans of the world. Here is the list of US Navy ships arrayed around the worlds the oceans of the world supporting the Apollo 8 mission:

    USS Yorktown (Prime Recovery Ship)
    Secondary Recovery Ships:
    USS Arlington
    USS Chipola
    USS Chuckawan
    USS Cochrane
    USS Francis Marion
    USS Guadalcanal
    USS Nicholas
    USS Rankin
    USS Rupertus
    USS Salinan
    USS Sandoval

    Bad weather in the Atlantic? Land in another site in the Atlantic. Don’t like that one? Land in one of three landing areas in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

    SpaceX has one recovery ship and a few RHIBS.

  • pzatchok

    I would like to see Space X try a solid ground landing with a cargo capsule. If they can start doing that them they obviously can land people safely.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

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