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Thank you!

 

The July fund-raising campaign is now over. Though the donations and subscriptions were poor for most of the month, the response in the last helped make up the difference. Thank you all for coming through in the end. It was beyond gratifying to find out that there are supporters to my work out there.

 

I will keep this thank you notice up for the next week, just so that everyone who donated or subscribed can see it. And if you haven’t donated this year as yet, please consider supporting me in some small manner. My website has no advertising and no sponsors (other than my readers), and it is free for all to read and comment without charge or registration. Your support is the only thing that keeps me going. You can either give a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. 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.


German rocket startup HyImpulse raises an additional $58 million

The German rocket startup HyImpulse announced today [pdf] that it has raised an additional €50 million ($58 million) in private investment capital.

The round was co-led by JOIN Capital and Ace Capital Partners, with participation from new
investors, including North Ventures, BW-Capital, Bayern Kapital and the German Aerospace Center
(DLR), alongside continued support from existing shareholders including Campus Founders
Ventures. It brings the company’s total equity and public funding to more than €125 million.

Though HyImpulse was the first German startup to complete a launch of any kind, a suborbital test launch in May 2024, since then it has fallen behind its two German rocket competitors, Rocket Factory Augsburg and Isar Aerospace. It initially planned to launch its SL1 orbital rocket in 2024, but has repeatedly delayed that flight, and at the moment is no longer saying when that launch might occur. Meanwhile the other two German companies have rockets on the pads and have made attempts to launch, though both failed in their first efforts.

HyImpulse has deals for launching from Saxavord in the United Kingdom and the Etlaq spaceport in Oman. At the same time, earlier this year France dropped it as a user of its joint launchpad in French Guiana.

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

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