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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.


May 19, 2023 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Russia and Uganda sign deal not to deploy weapons in space
  • This agreement, like the Biden administration’s call for a similar ban, is worthless. When it comes time that someone wants to use force in space, force will be used, whether morally right or not. And the victim will have no choice but to respond in kind. That simply is the way of all things.

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

6 comments

  • sippin_bourbon

    Only $125k a person?
    I am glad my daughter is already married.
    I feel I am dodging a bullet there.

  • David Ross

    Well at least Black Sky will have a launchpad and fuel to rent/sell to RocketLab when/if they get it built. Cape Canaveral is running out of that space.

  • Patrick Underwood

    Very happy to learn that Uganda has agreed not to put weapons in space.

  • Jerry Greenwood

    I’d like to see how Uganda will enforce that treaty.

  • James Street

    The other day Jordan Peterson recorded a 2 hour video with engineer / scientist Brian Roemmele discussing Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT specifically. The discussion was more from the psychological side.

    ChatGPT and the Dawn of Computerized Hyper-Intelligence | Brian Roemmele | EP 357
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_E4t7tWHUY

    Some of my take aways:
    • Jordan Peterson has been using ChatGTP for a month to do advanced research on obscure topics. He asked it to write a graduate level paper crossing one of the schools of psychology with the writings of a famous writer like Solzhenitsyn and he said it did a good job.
    • AI will be a better teacher to children than humans. It can do things like watch a child’s facial expression and eye movement and study their learning style and strengths and weaknesses and constantly monitor and improve their teaching style. The child will learn in one hour what they currently do in one day.
    • We will have a personal AI on our device that we communicate with that then that communicates with the global AI in order to protect our privacy and from the bad guys using AI to harm us.
    • They talk a little about the downside of AI already covered in science fiction movies.

  • Jeff Wright

    The China launch…smelled like Wal-Mart

    Hope it’s debris lands on this dufus
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lukas_Walton

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