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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.

 

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For the past two years NASA and JPL have been under heavy hacker attack from China, according to NASA’s inspector general.

For the past two years NASA and JPL have been under heavy hacker attack from China, according to NASA’s inspector general.

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

8 comments

  • Pzatchok

    The Chinese people seem to have a low opinion of patent or copy rights.

    They also have a different opinion of imagination in general. I have heard a few Chinese students say that they don’t have to have an imagination they just have to pass the tests and get a job. Inventing something new is just not normal in their culture.

    I have heard Chinese businessmen actually say. “Why invent something new when they can make just as much money copying and selling something someone else did already.” Stealing and idea is not really stealing.

    So of course their government would reflect this philosophy.

    Why invent when you can steal it.

    Its easy enough to stop. Just have each government organization set up a dummy computer network and fill it with wrong information. The same can be done with every company out there.
    Eventually they will stop because they have no way to find out what is good info or bad.

  • I don’t know why they’d want to hack NASA, they have a more capable space program than we do. I’d think that they’d be more interested in our superior welfare-check printing technology.

  • Pzatchok

    There is some evidence that the Chinese culture is not an innovative culture.

    They invented stamps to use in printing, but in over a thousand years never invented movable type.

    They invented gun powder but after 1500 years never invented the cannon or hand gun.

    They invented paper, and a seismograph but they never put the two together.

    They used the square sail which has a very hard time sailing against the wind. They also knew of the lateen sail from the middle east and India which moved against the wind and turned very well but didn’t make great power. In 5 hundred years they never combined the two.

    They are doing what they have always done. Copying only what they know works.

  • mike shupp

    Three years. The report Keith Cowling points to at NASA WATCH came out last year (“February 29”).

    It’s obnoxious. I trust we’re responding tit-for-tat and taking punishing countermeasures.

    OTOH, maybe this is the modern age’s equivalent of the code breaking that governments engaged in back in the 1930’s and 1940’s? We’re all under increased scrutiny these days, with each of our actions, each of our emails, each of our phone calls, each of our store purchases being examined for hints that we are tax evaders, terrorists, Palmolive soap users, pederasts, gun nuts, rude to American Indians, salacious toward cheerleaders, etc. Why should corporations and government organizations expect less rigorous examination?

  • wodun

    There are some people who think that China is not a threat and that we are not competing with them but incidents like this show that they are and we are.

    The astonishing part is that they had full access to JPL for two years. We should have known and done something about it.

  • wodun

    Ya, it would be naive to think that we are not also engaging in this type of behavior.

  • I remember Chinese hackers trying to get into the company I worked for which had no great secrets. I just think it’s very common. What are a few billion young guys to do without any girlfriends?

  • Pzatchok

    What the hell are we going to get off of them?

    What have they developed on their own in the last 20 years?

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