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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.

 

No matter. I am here, and here I intend to stay. If you like what I do and have not yet donated or subscribed, please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. 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.

 

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March 26, 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

  • Richard M

    Hello Bob,

    I’m having some issues with my Google account, so I’m posting this here instead….

    Tonight, Eric Berger is reporting that Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo ship for its next resupply mission (NG-22) to ISS has been determined to be . . . too damaged in shipping to be able to safely fly. So NASA is scrambling to load more consumables on the Cargo Dragon mission going up next month while it figures out what to do for the rest of this year’s ISS manifest.

    Berger had a sharp observation to make:

    All of the roads for cargo supply, therefore, lead back to Dragon. As a result of Dream Chaser’s delays, Starliner’s problems, and the dropped Cygnus, NASA is now almost entirely reliant on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to get its astronauts to the space station and to feed them.

    https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/nasa-sidelines-cygnus-spacecraft-after-damage-in-transit-to-launch-site/

    I believe you were saying something about the value of redundancy in contracting the other day? :)

  • Richard M: Heh.

    I am right now rereading some classic Greek tragedies. In one there is a character who was given second sight by the gods and can always predict what will happen quite accurately. Her problem: No one ever listens to her.

    Describes my entire life in the space business. ;)

  • Richard M

    Looking Behind the Black, we discover a Cassandra!

    Thank God for SpaceX. Where would we be without them? But we need other capable vendors in the trade space, desperately.

  • wayne

    Dr. Jordan Peterson
    “The Story Begins with Abzu & Tiamat”
    2017 Maps of Meaning excerpt
    https://youtu.be/NC6-QA-kCng
    11:27

  • Mike Borgelt

    “Thank God for SpaceX.”

    Thank Elon and Gwynne for SpaceX and the people they motivated and employed to build magnificent machines.

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