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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
 
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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.


JAXA confirms first hop of Callisto delayed until ’26

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

Japan’s space agency JAXA has now confirmed what France’s space agency CNES had revealed in August, that the first 100-meter-high hop of the government-proposed Callisto engineering Grasshopper-type test rocket will not take place any earlier than 2026.

This joint project of JAXA, CNES, and Germany’s space agency DLR was first proposed in 2015, and by 2018 was aiming for a 2020 launch. Four years past that target date and they are still not ready to launch. Remember too that even after it completes its test hop program an operational orbital rocket would have to be created. It does not appear this can easily be scaled up to fit Ariane-6.

SpaceX meanwhile conceived its Grasshopper vertical test prototype in 2011, began flying that year, and resulted in an actual Falcon 9 first stage landing in 2015. It has subsequently completed well over 300 actual commercial flights, reusing first stages up to 23 times.

The contrast between these government agencies and that private company is quite illustrative.

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

5 comments

  • Jeremy, Alabama

    SpaceX has gone from being ridiculed on the subject of reusability, to making it a ho-hum almost daily occurrence. It has also shown the world what a reusable “Gen 1” booster looks like, what the development program looks like, and what “Gen 2” looks like, with the development program for that. Now, every country in the space business is trying to create a clone of Falcon 9 and, if they can afford it, a clone of Spaceship also.

    No government agency was talking about any of these things until SpaceX rubbed everyone’s noses in it. Staying true to themselves, the Europeans are whining instead of investing, and the Chinese are stealing everything they can and moving forward as fast as they can.

  • You gotta be willing to break stuff. Governments and their contractors aren’t, which is all the difference in the world. Cheers –

  • David Eastman

    I suspect this project is doomed not just because of who is doing it, but by the choice of LH2/LOX as their fuel mix. LH2 has proven way too hard to manage for everyone who has tried it, it’s the antithesis of a cheaply and quickly reusable engine.

  • Jeff Wright

    China is government and they are closing the gap.

    People get too wrapped up in what particular pocket space money is pulled out of.
    Put the same sorry people in a private outfit-and all that’s different is their hat.

    Now, were I to try an invest in a company–it would be one that WANTS to build things–say, talk Stoke into delaying Phil Bono designs in favor of Kistler ‘s two stage trash cans… parachutes and air-bags…simpler than any other RLV…hose it off, stand it up.

    Japan doesn’t really want a space program–they’re like Baptists–always coming up with some committee or other.

    Of course, there is such a thing as being too eager…to steal a Lou Grant quote “I hate spunk!”

    I have to deal with these gig-goons, doordasher freaks who think a truck lane is their private parking lot and that I’m their waiter…or these foreign truck drivers….I ask them if they have dry OR frozen….and they say “yes.”

    Errrr.

  • Lee S

    @ Jeff…. No offence, but I have literally no clue what you are talking about .. my advice is take more water with it…

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