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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


March 31, 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.

Readers!

  

My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.

 

As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!

 

For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. 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.

 

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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
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2 comments

  • Don C.

    “On this day in 1997 Pioneer-10’s mission ended, 25 years after launch…”

    Well, almost ended. If the purpose of Pioneer was to teach us to pay attention, then it was revived.

    Data started to be questioned as far back as 1980 on Pioneer’s location. A paper in 1999 (arXiv:gr-qc/9903024 v2 9 Mar 1999 – Turyshev) started a 14-year march to find why Pioneer was always closer to the sun than we thought. Measurements were off by 10^-9 m/s^2.

    The journey spanned another 14 years to ‘solve this problem’. arXiv:1307.0537 13 Jun 2013 (ten Boom).

    Still leaving us to solve the problem of data storage however – if data from 30 years prior was nearly impossible to retrieve, how will we get at original data even 1000 years from now? Need we go back to vellum and ink?

  • Richard M

    Eric Berger today has a pretty remarkable long form interview with Butch Wilmore about what it was like actually flying Starliner. And it turns out, it was a good deal hairier than we knew. To the point where he felt confident right from the start that he wasn’t coming back to Earth on the Starliner. And Suni Williams felt the same way.

    Wilmore added that he felt pretty confident, in the aftermath of docking to the space station, that Starliner probably would not be their ride home. “I was thinking, we might not come home in the spacecraft. We might not.”

    And: Wilmore describes how there was a moment during the docking attempt where he was doubtful that they could either dock with the station, or have sufficient control to get back to Earth, either. Scary stuff.

    https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/

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