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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

If you have been a regular reader and a fan of my work and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider doing so. I take no ads, I keep the website clean from pop-ups and annoying demands (most of the time). Thus, I depend entirely on my readers to support me. Though this means I am sacrificing some income, it also means that I remain entirely independent from outside pressure. By depending solely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, no one can threaten me with censorship. You don't like what I write, you can simply go elsewhere.

 

You can support me either by giving 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.

 

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High altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, raises $40 million

Capitalism in space: The Florida-based high altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, has successfully secured $40 million in investment capital funding, which the company says will be sufficient for them to begin flights by 2024.

Unlike other space-tourism companies, Space Perspective isn’t relying on rockets to send passengers to space. Instead, it will use a balloon to carry its roomy pressurized “Spaceship Neptune” capsule up to 100,000 feet before gently coming back down to Earth and splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Each trip is expected to last about six hours with about two hours at the 100,000-foot mark.

They say their ticket price will be $125,000, which is far less than the suborbital space missions of Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic, but significantly more than the $50,000 that the other U.S. high altitude balloon company, Arizona-based Worldview, says it will charge for similar flights.

Nonetheless, the company’s CEO says they have already booked 25 flights.

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 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

  • At altitude for 2 hours, rather than a few minutes, for less than a new Porsche? Heck, yeah. No, you don’t get to say you’re an ‘astronaut’, but the view is about the same, It is what it is: a high-altitude balloon ride. But 125k is an attractive price to many,

  • Questioner

    Blair Ivey:

    The question is what is more important: 1. The view of the earth, especially of the thin atmosphere, or 2. The experience of weightlessness?

    For “Captain Kirk” it was obviously the former, the experience of the difference between the black nothingness and home earth. I guess that applies to most people. Those who are looking for the sporty element of weightlessness can book parabolic flights in a jet aircraft for about $ 5,000.

    As for the balloon flight, I would like to go a little higher. Unmanned balloons have reached a height of 50 km.

  • Questioner

    Correction : replace “height” by “altitude”

  • Questioner: I understand the intent, but a 50km-high balloon would be an attraction in itself.

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