To read this post please scroll down.

 

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.

 

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.


Failed launch by Iran

Though information is at present scarce and contradictory, Iran in the past few days appears to have made one or two launch attempts, either of a missile system near Tehran or of its orbital Zoljanah rocket from its Semnan spaceport to the east.

According to this Newsweek report, the launch was of a “suspected missile system … near its capital, Tehran.”

According to this tweet from astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who monitors such activity, it was a “possible failed orbital launch attempt … of an IRGC Zoljanah launch vehicle from Semnan, Iran.”

There is also this tweet from Iran media, which calls it a “missile” and a “test” that failed.

I think these conflicting reports are describing the same launch. If its the latter, then the question is whether it was a Zoljanah rocket, and if so was it attempting its first orbital launch after two suborbital tests in ’21 and ’22?

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

  • Dick Eagleson

    The next time the Israeli Air Force pays a visit to Iranian nuclear research/weapons sites perhaps they could spare some attention for Iranian space launch infrastructure as well. Iran is not a nation that should possess either nukes or long-range missiles or have anything on-orbit. In the meantime, confusion to the enemy.

  • Richard M

    Hello Dick,

    Well, given the Mossad’s success at penetrating Iranian security over and over again, we can’t rule out that some creative sabotage was involved in this launch failure…

  • Dick Eagleson

    Richard M,

    True. One can only hope it was so. But a massive aerial bombardment would make the point so much more emphatically.

  • Jeff Wright

    Nah–just send over the Knapp/Lazar gnords–
    offer to sell them the antigravity systems they crow about on coast-to-coast.

    All that oil money shouldn’t go to waste :)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *