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Thank you!

 

The July fund-raising campaign is now over. Though the donations and subscriptions were poor for most of the month, the response in the last helped make up the difference. Thank you all for coming through in the end. It was beyond gratifying to find out that there are supporters to my work out there.

 

I will keep this thank you notice up for the next week, just so that everyone who donated or subscribed can see it. And if you haven’t donated this year as yet, please consider supporting me in some small manner. My website has no advertising and no sponsors (other than my readers), and it is free for all to read and comment without charge or registration. Your support is the only thing that keeps me going. You can either give a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. 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.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.

 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to

Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Eutelsat orders 229 new OneWeb satelites from Airbus

The European satellite company Eutelsat yesterday awarded Airbus a contract to build 229 new OneWeb satellites.

Eutelsat has signed an Authorisation to Proceed (ATP) with Airbus Defence and Space covering initial industrial activities for these 229 satellites. They are planned in addition to the 440 satellites already procured from Airbus due for delivery and launch soon. It will bring the total of new OneWeb satellites manufactured by Airbus to 669, and will ensure and enhance service continuity of the OneWeb constellation.

The satellites will be manufactured at Airbus Defence and Space’s Toulouse facility, already actively delivering the previous batches, enabling production continuity, rapid and homogeneous delivery rate.

The constellation presently has over 600 satellites in orbit. The press release did not reveal how much Eutelsat will pay Airbus for this work, nor did it provide a timeline for delivery. In addition, Eutelsat made no mention of a launch provider to get the satellites into orbit, though in 2022 it signed up Relativity’s not-yet-launched Terran-R and in 2024 Mitsubishi’s H3 rocket for this work. Previously it had largely depended on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket, but that deal ended when Russia invaded the Ukraine. Subsequently SpaceX and India picked up the slack so the launches could go on more or less on schedule, but since then Eutelsat has clearly worked to find other rockets for its launches.

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

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