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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.


Ingenuity completes 56th flight on Mars

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

According to a tweet yesterday by the Ingenuity engineering team, the helicopter successfully completed its 56th flight on Mars on August 25, 2023, flying 1,345 feet to the northwest at a height of 39 feet for 141 seconds, or two minutes and twenty-one seconds. The distance traveled and the flight time were slightly longer than planned, but that likely was because the helicopter used that extra time to determine a safe landing site.

The green line on the map above shows the approximate new position of Ingenuity, positioned close to the planned route of Perseverance as indicated by the red dotted line. Perseverance’s present location is marked by the blue dot.

Neretva Vallis is the gap in the western rim of Jezero crater through which the delta had flowed eons before, and is the rover’s eventual target in order to begin exploring the terrain beyond, known to be very rich in mineral content.

Meanwhile, the Ingenuity engineering team has already released its flight plan for the 57th flight, heading north about 670 feet and targeting tomorrow for flight.

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

  • LocalFluff

    I will proba¨bly be pestering our poor Robert here with some evening entertainment links to podcasters who do amazing things in steel cutting engineering, and art for that matter. Because I am discovering some pretty fabulous stuff in that genre as my recent story is that I’ve been unemployed since the covid [deleted] story. I were an economist as in business administration, into logistics so more the numbers guy than most business guys, but less so than any engineering guy. Stuck in the middle, and that’s never good. One has to be best at something.

    So now, even at mature age, I am being retrained into metal cutting. Perhaps one can see some parallel to the Great Power politics concerning sanctions and rearmament in the background there. Anyway, I think it is mostly because the guys who did this job before are entering retirement age and that’s why there’s a pretty deasperate demand for new labor even in a shrinking European manufacturing industry.

    But what do I care for the big picture? I get to learn how to cut steel, and that’s great fun! School learns me the fine stuff using small machines. But I might soon get a job at a company that is mass manufacturing two meter diameter large, decimeter thick and some tons heavy cones made out of mangan steel, Hadfield steel, used to crush rocks. Pretty much the heaviest steel industry there is. And that gives me a hard on! In a 150 year old factory building built out of red clay bricks once put by hand into beautiful patterns, in the center of a small town where in one end the raw metal is molten and cast to in the other end finally be paint coated and delivered. And somewhere inbetween my task would be to operate a huge machine that cuts the sloping surface to within 0.03 angular degrees precision, I heard. All of this is completely new to me, and I love learning new stuff! And I love big heavy hard thingies that crush granite.

    Here’s btw a short illustration of how hollow steel spheres are made. Out of some soft ductile steel alloy, of course and not hard Hadfield steel. One welds together some steel plates to a polygon, fills it with water and, well, does what is looks and sounds like here:
    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pm6hM77JD3w
    (Steel is a crazy industry)!

  • LocalFluff: As you know, I very much welcome your comments. Always worthwhile and informative.

    However, adding a few ** to an obscenity doesn’t cut it. I’ve deleted the offensive word. You were once banned for a week for such language. Please don’t force me to do it again. Be the civilized adult I know you are, and find mature ways to write about this stuff. You have no reason to behave like a barbarian.

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