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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.


Issue with comments…

To all my readers, there appears to be a new issue with the comments filter that is tossing some perfectly legitimate comments into the spam folder. If you post and you see your comment disappear, please do not post it again. I will eventually check the spam folder and get it restored.

My web guy tells me this is an ongoing problem, and there isn’t much that can be done but to go to the Akismet site and complain. I will do this, but I expect that this problem will linger for the next few weeks. It appears that if I approve comments as “not spam,” eventually Akismet will begin to recognize this and will adjust.

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

8 comments

  • Laurie

    I noticed, but no worries.

  • Kirk

    This is a test message which I will post while the reCAPTCHA is still spinning.

  • Kirk

    Bob, there is a possibly related weirdness I’ve seen. If I check the “I’m not a robot” box, and then jump the gun and hit “Post Comment” while it is still processing and hasn’t yet drawn the green check mark, then the comment seems to disappear into the void, though the system seems to remember it and will complain about reposting the same comment if I try to send it again. (“Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!”) Perhaps they land in your spam folder, but I’ve not noticed such comments reappear.

    To aid your diagnostic, 2 minute before I post this, I will post in this thread a short comment stating only “This is a test message which I will post while the reCAPTCHA is still spinning.” If that shows up in your spam folder, then this might be one source of the false positives.

    Happy debugging!

  • Kirk

    … and neither comment showed up, so the “jumping the gun” issue might be unrelated. I do wonder if the second is in you spam folder (due to this new problem) and the first is lost in the void somewhere.

    Cheers!

  • Lee S

    Ok …. test posting here….

  • Edward

    Kirk,
    I have been experiencing this problem the past couple of days, but I have been waiting for the green check mark, as usual.

    Robert,
    Sorry for contributing to your multiple-comments-in-the-spam-filter problem. I have experienced this problem on rare occasions in the past. Should it happen in the near future, I will do as you suggest and be patient.

  • Edward: Right now I am repeatedly checking the spam folder and approving comments there. Increases my workload, but from what I understand, if I do this for awhile Akismet will eventually register my approvals and stop sending these commenters to the spam folder.

  • Alex Andrite

    “If you post and you see your comment disappear, please do not post it again.”

    That is what my kids use to say to me during our serious life challenging conversations, but not an actual translation … almost, but not actual …..

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