To read this post please scroll down.

 

Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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 30, 2025 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

  • Dick Eagleson

    This is the first I’ve heard of a potential move to make Starshield/Starlink the Space Force’s Transport Layer. It makes excellent sense, not least because it already is a transport layer. Furthermore, it is one that our two most consequential current geopolitical opponents have been sparing no effort to try to munge up for at least four years with no signs of consequential success.

    Rather than, in essence, simply buying more of what’s already up and running, Sen. Coons wants to go through a lengthy process to allow legacy contractors and tyro start-ups to reinvent this particular wheel at great expense and with no likelihood of achieving even as good an outcome. Being a Democrat, one can safely assume his sudden full-throated advocacy of competition is simply a pretext for depriving a Musk company of something it obviously deserves to get both for its own good and the good of the nation.

  • Dick Eagleson: At the same time, it isn’t good for our military to be dependent on only one satellite constellation. Redundancy has great value, from a strategic and tactical perspective.

  • mkent

    ”It makes excellent sense…”

    No, it doesn’t. Starlink just can’t do what the transport layer can do. Not even close.

    ”Rather than, in essence, simply buying more of what’s already up and running…”

    Just the opposite. 19 prototype transport layer satellites from two different suppliers are on orbit right now and have demonstrated operability with ground stations, with each other, with troops in the field, with two different types of tracking layer satellites, with two additional types of missile warning satellites, and with legacy weapon systems. Operational transport layer satellites from three different suppliers are scheduled for launch this very summer. SpaceX’s proposed system won’t be operational for another five years even if everything works according to plan.

    ”Sen. Coons wants to go through a lengthy process to allow legacy contractors and tyro start-ups to reinvent this particular wheel at great expense and with no likelihood of achieving even as good an outcome…”

    Again, just the opposite. Existing suppliers are already building satellites far more capable for purpose than Starlink satellites, and a government bureaucrat wants to stop progress and give SpaceX a five-year no-bid contract to catch up.

    ”…depriving a Musk company of something it obviously deserves to get both for its own good and the good of the nation.”

    Deserves to get? Deserves? Why? Because he’s Elon Musk?

    SpaceX bid on an early round of this competition and lost because its satellites were not as fit for purpose as those from other suppliers. To my knowledge SpaceX didn’t even bid on subsequent rounds because it simply didn’t have the expertise to build what was required.

    Considering what these satellites are tasked to do, that bureaucrat is putting a whole lot of American lives at risk just to give SpaceX a no-bid contract. I wonder if he has a job with SpaceX lined up like Kathy Lueders did when she awarded SpaceX the HLS contract.

  • Richard M

    I wonder if he has a job with SpaceX lined up like Kathy Lueders did when she awarded SpaceX the HLS contract.

    I wasn’t going to comment on this thread, because I don’t feel able to evaluate the transport layer question based on what I have seen in the public arena. But this crack is something else. It’s not accurate, and it’s not fair, mkent.

    The Appendix H NextSTEP HLS contract was awarded on April 16, 2021. At that time, Lueders had been the associate administrator of the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate for less than a year. She was only getting fully in train by that point.

    Five months later, in September 2021, Bill Nelson did that big re-org of the NASA human spaceflight program. He split up HEO into two directorates: one for deep space exploration (that is Artemis), and one for ongoing operations (that is, ISS). Lueders was allowed to keep only the latter portfolio, and Jim Free was brought in to oversee the first. It was a victory of the old guard, and a major demotion of sorts of Lueders. More to the point, it was seen that way, both within and without the agency. As Eric Berger put it at the time, “This is a significant diminution of duties for the current HSF chief, Lueders. […]Tthe most significant thing here is that the woman who best understands the value of commercial space to NASA’s success over the last decade won’t be responsible for its deep space exploration efforts in the coming decade.”

    (It was striking how this was addressed at the press conference. As Laura Forczyk put it in her tweet (Sept. 21) at the time, “Berger asks the question on everyone’s mind: Is this NASA directorate change a demotion for Kathy Lueders? NASA Administrator @SenBillNelson
    dismisses the question, praises Kathy Lueders, and changes the subject.”)

    If sources are to be believed, the expectation was that this was supposed to be a transitional position to departure from NASA for Kathy. That transition ended up lasting about a year and a half — In late March 2023 Lueders announced she would retire from NASA in April 2023. From what I have heard, conversations with Elon about her taking on a job at Starbase commenced at that time.

    And look….you’ve read the source selection statement, right? It was obvious *why* SpaceX was chosen. They scored ahead on all three criteria. Even Blue Origin’s lawsuits, for all their huffing and puffing about Starship being “high risk” and “immensely complex,” were really focused on the question of why NASA did not make TWO awards.

    NASA (and, God help us, the Defense Department) has certainly had questionable procurement decisions by men moving through the revolving door with industry at times in the past (looking at you, Scott Horowitz). But there’s just no basis for thinking that happened here. Lueders did not go to SpaceX until over two years after the Appendix H selection, and only then after she was demoted and nudged toward the exit.

  • pzatchok

    You could have a better chance of hiding military communication sats in the Starlink orbit.

    The higher they orbit the easier it is to single them out.

    Having a back up to your back up is always a good military strategy. If it could be afforded.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *