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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


February 21, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

Readers!

  

My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.

 

As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!

 

For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.

 

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11 comments

  • Richard M

    That X-37 photo is just amazing.

  • Richard M

    Some more good news for SpaceX today:

    NASA announced Feb. 21 it awarded a task order through the NASA Launch Services II contract for the launch of the Near Earth Orbit (NEO) Surveyor spacecraft on a Falcon 9. That task order is valued at approximately $100 million, the agency stated.

    NEO Surveyor will launch on a Falcon 9 from Florida as soon as September 2027. It will operate from the Earth-sun L-1 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction of the sun.

    […]The launch contract came just after the $1.2 billion mission passed its critical design review Feb. 6. That allows NEO Surveyor to move into the next phases of assembly and testing.

    https://spacenews.com/nasa-selects-spacex-to-launch-neo-surveyor/

    NASA press release: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-planetary-defense-space-telescope-launch-services-contract/

    Kind of pricey for Falcon 9 launch. Is this expendable? (It is going to a Lagrange Point, after all.) Or just a lot of special launch services involved?

  • Jerry Greenwood

    I’m waiting for ad agencies to figure out a way to work AI in to toothpaste commercials.

    It’s coming.

  • I have a photo of a store Coke display featuring limited-edition flavor Y3000 with the tagline “Co-Created With Artificial Intelligence”. I only wish I were making any of that up.

  • Milt

    One wonders if the Chinese have ever watched 2001?

    “Open the pod bay doors, HAO.”

  • Dick Eagleson

    Richard M,

    Wikipedia says NEO Surveyor will only weigh 1.3 tonnes so I don’t think we’re looking at an expendable 1st stage mission here.

    Falcon 9 has flown L1 halo orbit missions before, notably the DSCOVR (“Goresat”) mission a decade ago. DSCOVR only weighed about half of what NEO Surveyor will, but the mission was flown on a v1.1 Falcon 9, not a Block 5 – which didn’t yet exist.

    Landing of 1st stages was also not yet a thing, but the DSCOVR’s 1st stage did do one of those “soft splashdown” ocean “landings” that SpaceX was doing during that period ahead of its first actual booster landing in Dec. of that same year.

    So NEO Surveyor won’t be an expendable booster mission. It might even be an RTLS landing.

    NEO Surveyor is a deep space mission. So the $100 million launch price tag is most likely related to the sort of extra NASA-mandated hoop-jumping and paperwork that always seems to accompany such.

  • Richard M

    Hello Dick,

    I hadn’t actually looked at the numbers when I posted that, and — well, I did think it had more mass than that. I also forgot that it’s infrared, and those do require a lot of special payload processing including purge systems right up to the point of launch.

    NASA and SpaceX have provided no launch details, but it does seem most likely that the extra $33M is for special payload services.

  • Gary

    Looks like Trump already is it investing in the Huntsville economy by moving 500 FBI agents there..

    https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/21/boom-kash-patel-is-already-making-huge-changes-at-the-fbi-n4937220

  • Richard M

    Looks like Trump already is it investing in the Huntsville economy by moving 500 FBI agents there..

    I could snark that Huntsville didn’t do anything to deserve this, but maybe this is another sign that Trump might be buttering up Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville for that SLS kill-shot.

  • Bob Wilson

    Article about China’s space ambitions. Not much new, but worth reading. Should have mentioned that a large part of China’s development strategy is to steal technology from the leaders like SpaceX.

    https://thediplomat.com/2025/02/chinas-dream-of-space-exploration-with-no-end/

    China’s Space Dream: No Limits, No End
    China’s space strategy is shaped by military ambitions, aspirations for technological dominance, and ubiquitous commercial considerations.

  • Jeff Wright

    Take our rockets first, then dump the alphabet police on us…thanx a bunch.

    That’s okay—you know why?

    When ISS is splashed—what happens to Dream Chaser—to Cygnus?

    Non-SpaceX New Spacers are *also* going to be looking for work.

    Poor deluded saps—they thought SLS was the rat—when the whole time—it was actually the cheese.

    They bit down hard, and now the spring will fasten around their necks as well.

    I must say, this was masterful executed…going after NewSpace rivals when folks just thought he was going after Old Space.

    (Slow clap…)

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