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Readers!

 

My July fund-raising campaign to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black is now over. I want to thank all those who so generously donated or subscribed, especially those who have become regular supporters. I can't do this without your help. I also find it increasingly hard to express how much your support means to me. God bless you all!

 

The donations during this year's campaign were sadly less than previous years, but for this I blame myself. I am tired of begging for money, and so I put up the campaign announcement at the start of the month but had no desire to update it weekly to encourage more donations, as I have done in past years. This lack of begging likely contributed to the drop in donations.

 

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Live stream of Elon Musk’s speech to SpaceX employees today

FINAL UPDATE: It appears his talk has been called off, for the present. I suspect he wants a better idea what happened on today’s flight before speaking.

UPDATE: It appears Musk has rescheduled his speech for 6 pm (Central) tonight, after the launch of the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy. The embedded live stream below is for this rescheduled broadcast.

I have embedded below the Space Affairs live stream of Elon Musk’s speech that he plans to give to his SpaceX employees today at 10 am (Pacific) today. Musk has entitled it “The road to making life interplanetary.” He has already indicated that he will outline in more detail SpaceX’s program for getting Starship/Superheavy operational, including the likelihood of test flights to Mars in the near future.

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

6 comments

  • John

    Confused on times (among a great many other things). 6pm Central would be about a half hour before the launch window. Space X website: “The ninth flight test of Starship is preparing to launch as soon as Tuesday, May 27. The launch window will open at 6:30 p.m. CT.” The youtube link above says speech live at 8:55pm, don’t know with my VPN if it knows that I’m EST. That’s Zulu minus four.

  • John: I’ve been confused by this schedule change as well. However, the two live streams for the launch and the speech are presently scheduled to begin in about 3 hours and 5 hours respectively, so that clarifies things. The launch window opens at 6:30 Central. Musk will speak about two hours later, probably after the completion of the flight itself.

  • Richard M

    They got to SECO! Woohoo!

  • Mike Borgelt

    Not a good day. Lost booster at start of landing burn – only 12 out of 13 engines lit. But reused for launch.
    Out of control after SECO. No Starlink simulator deploy. Won’t survive re-entry.

  • Richard M

    Mike,

    This was still a step forward — even from just what we in the public know. They got to SECO. They successfully reused a booster.

  • John

    Musk is not very punctual.

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