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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.
 

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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.


India proposes new oppressive space law

India’s government has proposed a new space law that essentially places all control of future space projects under the control of the central government.

The proposed law, which is open for comment for the next month, can be read here [pdf]. I’ve read it, and it astonishes me in its oppressiveness and hostility to private enterprise. This clause, one of many similar clauses, sums this up quite well:

Any form of intellectual property right developed, generated or created onboard a space object in outer space, shall be deemed to be the property of the Central Government.

The law would also require anyone who wants to launch a space project to get a license from the government, and gives the government the power to control that license in all aspects, including the power to cancel it for practically any reason.

If this law passes I expect that India’s burgeoning space industry will suffer significantly, especially because it will make it difficult to attract investment capital. Instead, it will be the central government that will run the business, and in the long run such government businesses always do badly.

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

  • Dick Eagleson

    This looks like an attempt by the professional bureaucrats of India – sometimes known as the Babu State – to assert their authority over an additional area of national economic life. My grasp of Indian internal politics is insufficient to form any rational opinion as to what the odds of this proposal becoming law might be, but I agree with Mr. Z that India would be shooting itself in the foot with a shotgun if it is so foolish as to enact such a law.

  • LocalFluff

    India the other year introduced a catastrophic currency reform. To eliminate the black market which is what upwards a billion of Indians live off of daily. Their savings were eradicated over night because they save in cash and those paper bills were suddenly declared worthless and could only be transformed to a fraction of their nominal value via criminal gangs well connected with the corrupt authorities. Since there was a sudden shortage of cash, commercial activity collapsed. Not in the big export industry that drives official GDP figures, but in the huge informal small-scale business economy of India.

    The people of India create all of this wealth with their skills, despite of their mad government. I was unfortunate to study statistics at a university (which isn’t fun because it’s hard), and pretty much every text book and paper in the literature list had an unpronounceable Indian name. They certainly know something math genetically. They invented chess! But they are poor at electing political leaders. I think that this whole democracy and government thing is alien to their nature and that they would do much better without it.

  • wayne

    “Gems of Ramanujan and their Lasting Impact on Mathematics”
    International Center for Theoretical Physics
    November 2016
    https://youtu.be/ay1RCfQkrWQ
    (1:08:21)

  • ken anthony

    Thomas Sowell in his books on economics uses India as a bad example of over regulation across the board. It’s not just this example.

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