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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.

 

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Former SpaceX employee arrested

A former SpaceX employee has been arrested for operating one of the largest drug marketplaces on the dark part of the web.

It appears he must have spent a lot of his time at SpaceX designing and operating a dark web website where people could go to buy illegal drugs. It also appears that this might have contributed to SpaceX’s decision to fire him during SpaceX’s most recent employee purges.

I must say that I find this story very sad. The guy gets a job at one of the premier cutting edge companies in the world where he can help that company build rockets that will take humans to the stars, and what does he do with his time? He creates a webpage to sell illegal drugs.

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

  • ORION 314

    No matter how smart a man thinks he is, he is NEVER “smart enough”
    a sad waste….

  • wodun

    “It appears he must have spent a lot of his time at SpaceX designing and operating a dark web website where people could go to buy illegal drugs.”

    Probably not while he was on the job.

  • Pzatchok

    SpaceX could have been the one to turn in Mr. Anonymous.

    You know he was hiding his involvement with the website and more than likely using company computers and connections as his first screen.

  • Anthony marshall

    Hell space x probably hired him so he could set up a place to buy drugs most of the employees there do drugs especially coke and speed nobody can work 12 hours a day for weeks on end without drugs. How do i know this well i used to work there and saw it first hand. TheY love there cocaine

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