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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.

 

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.


Fuel for Russia’s nuclear space engine

The competition heats up: According to Russian press sources, the first fuel for that country’s nuclear space engine project has now been delivered to Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy corporation.

The article is very unclear whether this space engine is a nuclear power plant similar to those used by NASA’s deep space Voyager, Pioneer, and Cassini probes, or whether it is a real nuclear-powered engine designed to provide thrust. Russia has never launched a probe with the former, so that would be an advancement for them, but it would not be a game-changer in the exploration of the solar system. If the latter, however, it will give them the capability no one else has to travel quickly and more efficiently to other worlds.

Based on a careful rereading of the article, I suspect the former.

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

2 comments

  • Wayne

    –Have a nice little 60 page booklet, “Nuclear Propulsion for Space,” from the Understanding the Atom Series, USAEC. Oak Ridge, TN. (1971 rev)
    [William R. Corliss & Francis C. Schwenk]

    Library of Congress card catalog number 79-171030

    >It HAS been Google-ized, digitized, & available on-line.

    Describes the “Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application” program (NERVA) of NASA & AEC.

    –Is this the type of technology to which you refer? (as opposed to ion-engines?)

    Now… I wonder why we stopped investigating all this?? It wasn’t for technical-reasons, so it had to have been a political decision.

    We spent a considerable amount on research & producing test-engines at the “Nuclear Rocket & Development Station, Nevada.”
    —References in general details the “PeeWee,” “Phoebus,” “Pluto,” & “Poodle” “nuclear rocket test engines & reactor-components.” Pictures, diagrams, results, factoids.
    –There is, as well a Technical Reading list with 6 References & 4 different films produced on contract with NASA, AEC, and “Aerojet-General Corp.”

    >>The AEC produced 50 different Titles as part of their “Understanding the Atom Series.” All free at the time, & you could order 15 of them at the Visitors Center at the Oak Ridge National Lab. (I just found mine a few months ago. They are dated, but very interesting & from a time when we had infinitely more Hope & Trust for all things Nuclear.)

  • Wayne

    Found two of the films from “NERVA”!

    “NASA Project ROVER NERVA Nuclear Rocket Engine testing”
    11 minutes
    https://youtu.be/GmxPRCyR-Co

    Nuclear Propulsion In Space (1968)
    22 minutes
    https://youtu.be/MyshQ_Tg830

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