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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.


LISA Pathfinder switched off

After a successful mission proving the technology for a full scale orbiting gravitational wave detector, LISA Pathfinder was shut off yesterday.

After 16 months of science measurements an international team deactivated the LISA Pathfinder satellite on the evening of the 18th of July 2017. The gravitational-wave laboratory in space powered down after receiving the last commands in the evening and circles the Sun on a safe parking orbit. LISA Pathfinder has tested key technologies for LISA, the future gravitational-wave observatory in space, and has demonstrated their operative readiness. LISA is scheduled to launch into space in 2034 as an ESA mission and will “listen” to the entire Universe by measuring low-frequency gravitational waves.

The idea is laudable, but for Europe to need another seventeen years to build and launch the full scale telescope is absurd. They now know what needs to be done. It should be relatively easy and quick to get it into orbit. And even if it isn’t easy, seventeen more years? Give me a break.

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

2 comments

  • LocalFluff

    I don’t understand how anyone plans a 17 year project these days. BUT! It is a unique instrument the like of which never has and will never exist. When the guys who discovered gravitational waves say so, I shut up and listen. If Kip Thorne says so, I believe it. I believe anything he says. Gravitational waves in the spacetime fabric(?) Maybe I’ll have a chance to see a glimpse him when he receives his Nobel prize in Stockholm this November. The Einstein of our time. Now even the Big Bang isn’t the limit. Making weird weirder.

  • Edward

    LocalFluff wrote: “I don’t understand how anyone plans a 17 year project these days.

    If a project needs a lot of development, then it can take a long time to complete. Gravity Probe-B spent several decades developing new technologies in order to get the astonishingly spherical gyros, a magnetic-field-free environment, and other difficult innovations.

    At first I thought that the 17 years were needed for LISA to develop some forms of technologies or techniques, but the article says, “LISA Pathfinder has tested key technologies for LISA, the future gravitational-wave observatory in space, and has demonstrated their operative readiness.” It later says, “LISA Pathfinder has shown that the required technology for the LISA mission is already working optimally.

    With all the required technology in hand, there must be some unreported reason for such a long lead time to manufacture the three spacecraft. Or maybe ESA is just as unreasonably bureaucratic and slow as the US Defense Department.

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