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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
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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.


InSight has successfully landed

NASA engineers have received confirmation that InSight has successfully touched down on the Martian surface.

Don’t count your chickens yet. They need to wait about five hours for the dust, kicked up by landing, to settle before they try opening the solar panels. That must succeed, or the mission will fail, having no source of power.

The landing information was relayed through the two MARCO cubesats flying past Mars, a landmark engineering achievement that in a sense is more significant than the landing itself. These cubesats have demonstrated that smallsats can do complex interplanetary tasks. Expect a revolution in the planetary space exploration world.

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

7 comments

  • Lee S

    Congratulations NASA!!! Job well done!
    However I am going to express my feelings again regarding a probe which will “bore” 16 feet into the volcanic Martin surface…. Yet we have a drill on the curiosity rover that can’t drill half an inch into hard sandstone due to technical problems….
    I feel there is lack of cross pollination here, anything that can drill itself 16 feet into sandstone could surely do the same on an Europa/ Enceladus/ Titan mission, and could perhaps use the same tech to examine something more exciting than temperature varients

  • Mike Borden

    Lee- from my understanding it isnt a drill so to speak, but a coiling spring loaded hammering mechanism that will bore fractions of a millimeter at a time. Over the course of tens of thousands of “hammers” it should reach a depth of about 16 feet. Ill bet it could go even deeper but is restricted by the length of the cable it is attatched to.

  • D Ray

    Think of the planetary missions NASA could do using a fraction of the SLS boondoggle billions

  • Paul Goodley

    GREAT FOR THE SCIENTIST WHO DESIGNED AND WORKED ON THIS SPACECRAFT.

  • wayne

    Lee–
    Ditto with what Mike Borden relates– it’s not so much a drill as it is a miniature battering-ram device.
    (I believe it’s a temperature probe, cuz’ they want the temperature gradient data below the surface.)

    Who can tell me how far into the Moon the astronaut’s managed to pound a temperature probe? (I’ve variously heard 3-13 feet.)

  • wayne

    Lee–
    this is informative
    What will InSight do on Mars?
    https://youtu.be/csV0BCWZ0oA
    8:35

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