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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.


June 22, 2017 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

Embedded below the fold.

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

6 comments

  • Calvin Dodge

    Minor nit: the OKC bomb used ammonium nitrate, not ammonium perchlorate.

  • wayne

    Calvin–
    I heard that as well. It was ammonium nitrate + fuel-oil mixture, as far as I know.

    The Huntsman’s, are all crony-rino-statists. Don’t let the Mormon stuff or the Cancer Institute fool you

  • wayne

    FYI–
    ammonium perchlorate is available from Sigma Aldrich, retail, for “$211 the kilogram.” This is the most expensive way/amount, to buy it, but gives you a relative value-measure by which to judge. They have 4 kilo’s in stock for immediate shipment.

    My son-in-law (chem engineer) informs me this can be synthesized on a mass industrial-scale, fairly easily and in relatively short order. (on the order of week’s, and not month’s) EPA approval however, will take 12-18 months.

    It is a “specialty-chemical” and heavily regulated by the EPA, under the clean drinking water act of 2011. This explains in part, why only well-connected chemical companies play in this market.
    (Huntsman is one a few companies that can afford to comply with EPA regulations.)

    It does have a definite shelf-life as well, and can not be stored indefinitely. (And it costs a fortune to clean-up, if you spill it.)
    (It’s an Energizer-Bunny type of Government Contract, it’s keep paying & paying & paying.)

  • LocalFluff

    I thought there were plenty of solid rocket fuel being produced, for military ICBMs and anti-tank missiles and what not. Maybe they prefer other types. Fuel represents only 2% or so of the total launcher costs, so it doesn’t seem very “strategic” to “protect” its production domestically.

  • Calvin Dodge: You are correct. I allowed my memory to rule when I said that, which is always a mistake. Fact checking must always be done!

  • wodun

    Considering the military applications, there are reasons to protect domestic production other than cost. But there are probably better solutions to doing so.

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