To read this post please scroll down.

 

THANK YOU!!

 

My November fund-raising campaign for Behind the Black is now over. As I noted below, up until this month 2025 had been a poor year for donations. This campaign changed that, drastically. November 2025 turned out to be the most successful fund-raising campaign in the fifteen-plus years I have been running this webpage. And it more than doubled the previous best campaign!

 

Words escape me! I thank everyone who donated or subscribed. Your support convinces me I should go on with this work, even if it sometimes seems to me that no one in power ever reads what I write, or even considers my analysis worth considering. Maybe someday this will change.

 

Either way, I will continue because I know I have readers who really want to read what I have to say. Thank you again!

 

This announcement will remain at the top of each post for the next few days, to make sure everyone who donated will see it.

 

The original fund-raising announcement:

  ----------------------------------

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.


First Soyuz-5 rocket arrives at Baikonur

According to Russia’s state-run press, the first Soyuz-5 rocket has arrived at the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan, with a targeted maiden launch scheduled for December.

Soyuz-5 is designed to replace Russia’s soon-to-be retired Proton rocket, as well as the Ukrainian Zenit rocket that is no longer available because Russia invaded the Ukraine. It was first proposed in 2016, with its development proceeding in fits and starts since then. Part of the problems has been Kazakhstan, which demanded (and apparently received) a larger cut from Russia before it would allow Soyuz-5 to launch at the planned launchpad at Baikonur.

A larger factor in the delays has been a shortage of cash in Russia itself, as well the generally slow culture of its aging aerospace industry. However, in the case of Soyuz-5, it appears Russia managed to speed things up, as previous reports in 2024 suggested this first launch would be delayed until 2026.

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

7 comments

  • Lee S

    Bob, just a question, without intending to cause controversy ( fat chance ), but why do you insist on referring to Ukraine as “The Ukraine “?

    It seems to me that the “the” prefix was dropped a relatively long time ago.. and it’s use is a hark back to Soviet times, much as “the” Congo harks back to colonial times.

    I don’t want to cause a row, I am just interested in your thinking…

  • Lee S

    ( just to reiterate.. I honestly don’t , for a change.. intended to cause controversy… I was raised with “The Ukraine” , but my Ukrainian friends are happy the “the” has generally been dropped)

  • Lee S: It is very simple. Language changes like this generally offend me, especially when they are imposed for political reasons. And I don’t go along no matter which side does it. Some quick examples:

    manned space flight
    The Gulf of Mexico
    American Indians
    The Ukraine
    Kiev
    Turkey
    women (instead of “pregnant people”)
    Hamas terrorists (which the BBC recently tried to make believe were merely “citizens”)

    The last is just my dig at the BBC, so you can ignore it.

  • Gary

    Lee,

    How is your Fall going? My Stockholm friends seem to be spending much of their time in Spain and Italy. I am jealous.

  • Jeff Wright

    This is just a somewhat more plump, All-Russian Zenit

    Same engine…RD-170 series… kerolox
    https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/russian-space-program.32815/page-16#post-849969

    Four nozzles, one engine. Equal to F-1 used in the first stage of the Saturn V (five of them)

    Energiya used four Zenit first stages as strap-on boosters. The Energiya core block used four single nozzle RD-0120s…channel wall hydrolox equivalents of SSME/RS-25.

    Here is the Buran follow on
    https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/energia-buran-space-transportation-system.5656/page-14#post-850177

    Without the RD-0120 engines, Buran was just one payload for Energiya.

  • Lee S: you are right about Ukraine, and our gracious host Bob Z is wrong.

    When part of USSR, this region was referred to as “the Ukraine” which translates as “the borderlands”. Which it is, from Russia’s point of view! Moscow would say things like “When the Germans invade again, they won’t get to Mother Russia until they first fight through the Ukraine, the borderlands.”

    Now that Ukraine is an independent country, they don’t want to be anyone’s borderlands. Hence, they are called simply Ukraine.

    If Mr Z insists on calling Ukraine by an obsolete name, then I look forward to Bob’s reporting on Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Soviet Union, East Germany, and Rhodesia…

  • Richard M

    Like everyone else here, I was raised with “the Ukraine.” But this is probably the one name change I can live with, because the old style was less compatible with Ukrainian sovereignty, suggesting as it did (as Lee points out) that it was merely a borderland of Mother Russia.

    But I grok our host’s instinctive aversion to name changes, which are usually implemented by our media and academic classes for less palatable political motivations.

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