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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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In meetings today the European Space Agency has decided to upgrade Ariane 5 rather than immediately build a new Ariane 6 rocket.

In meetings today the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to upgrade Ariane 5 rather than immediately build a new Ariane 6 rocket.

Normally I would label this story as an example of “the competition heating up.” In this case, however, I don’t see how an upgrade of Ariane 5 can possibly be competitive. The rocket has been so expensive to operate that — even though it has dominated the launch market for years and is very reliable — ESA has had to subsidize its cost. It has never made a profit. I don’t see how they can reconfigure it enough to bring its cost down to compete with Falcon 9. In other words, they are trying to put lipstick on a pig.

Nor is this surprising. Arianespace is a government-run business, operated like a committee with the member nations of ESA all having a say. Under this arrangement, it is difficult if not impossible to get a quick and efficient decision. Moreover, political concerns will often outweigh issues of efficiency and profits.

In the open competitive market of privately-run companies that the launch market is becoming, I am very skeptical this kind of business can survive.

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

3 comments

  • Triumph of capitalism over socialism, at least under SpaceX gets taxed or regulated into oblivion.

  • With this decision the ESA has guaranteed Elon Musk’s prediction will be right:

    SpaceX CEO Elon Musk: Europe’s rocket ‘has no chance’.
    By Jonathan Amos
    Science correspondent, BBC News
    19 November 2012 Last updated at 10:47
    http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20389148

    He meant there the Ariane 5 could not compete with the Falcon 9. They would have to move to the Ariane 6 to produce a cost competitive rocket. The Ariane 5 ME is likely to be even more expensive so won’t help in that regard.
    But the ESA already has the means to produce a cost competitive rocket, but a false costing model prevents them from seeing it. They have the idea that a stage is only cost effective when using a single engine. So their plan for an Ariane 6 was to make stage at about the size of the Ariane 5 core but using an engine twice as powerful as the Vulcain.
    The problem is this would have been a multi-billion development project for the new engine; thus explaining their inability to pull the trigger on its development. But the point of the matter is Spacex has shown this cost model is fallacious. A stage can be cost effective using multiple copies of a smaller lower cost engine.
    By just using two or three Vulcains on the Ariane 5 core they would get a launcher of comparable cost to the Falcon 9. But an even more important result of this is that it would also without the side boosters give Europe an independent manned spaceflight capability.

    Bob Clark

  • I’m just wondering, with Eurozone budgets hemorrhaging red ink, how long it’ll be before people start demanding that ESA stop ‘wasting’ money on rockets and spend it on social programs.

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