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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.

 

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Behind The Black
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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.


Explosion and fire at Russian rocket engine factory

11:15 am

A major explosion followed by an extensive fire took place today at the Russian factory near the city of Perm that builds the engines for its Angara family of rockets.

JSC Proton-PM is one of Russia’s leading enterprises in the rocket, space, and mechanical engineering industries. Located more than 1,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, the plant specializes in the production of high-powered liquid-fueled rocket engines, as well as components for the aerospace and aviation industries. According to Ukrainian defense outlet Miilitarnyi, among the systems manufactured at the facility is the RD-191, a liquid-fueled rocket engine used in Russia’s Angara family of launch vehicles.

At the moment it is unclear exactly how much damage was done. It is also not clear as yet what started the fire, though all news reports appear to assume it was somehow an attack by the Ukraine. If by drones, the location, almost a thousand miles northwest of the Ukraine, suggests once again that the Ukraine’s drone technology is now capable of hitting a large portion of eastern Russia, at will. A similar drone attack of Russia’s Plesetsk spaceport occurred in August, and that is about 1,200 miles from the Ukrainian border.

Moreover, assuming this was a Ukrainian attack, it shows that it clearly knows exactly where these targets are, and can hit them with precision. And it appears it intends to do so, repeatedly, because it considers Russia’s rockets to be military assets launching its Rassvet broadband constellation, intended to provide its military a Starlink system in battle.

Considering Russia’s refusal in the past two decades to develop any competitive options to its government-run aerospace industry (controlled by Roscosmos), every hit like this is devastating. The longer Putin’s stupid war in the Ukraine continues, the more likely Russia’s entire space effort will be shut down or badly damaged, possibly for decades.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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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