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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 22, 2023 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

  • India targets May 29, 2023 for the next launch of its large GSLV rocket
  • It will place a GPS-type satellite into oribt.

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

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “This is one of China’s interior spaceports, so they apparently recognize that their rocket stages can fall on someone’s head, and are proud that in 2022 they avoided any such tragedies. Well, bully for them.

    This is a good thing. It shows that they care. Right up until there is an injury or casualty, then they are likely to just say “oops. Better luck next time.”

  • Max

    The Z-man asked;

    “The fundamental question remains: How could liquid water have been there in a climate that is too cold and an atmosphere too thin?”

    The evidence for flowing liquid is everywhere. (we assume it’s water). At one time I would not have believed it, until the pictures from the satellites started coming back.

    The way Mars is today, is not how it has always been.

    I have believed for a long time the hypothesis that the collapse of our mostly oxygen atmosphere
    into water, killing the dinosaurs, and the beginning of the “ice ages” was triggered by of cloud of gas from the local chimney, perhaps from a supernova, similar to the dust between us and the center of our own galaxy.
    It passed through changing our solar system forever, adding vast amounts of hydrolyzed carbon (methane) and hydrolyzed nitrogen (ammonia) as well as other light gases on all the planets in our solar system. (adding mass to all the planets and ice to the outer moons)
    Europa is much smaller than Mars, and yet is the said to have a large amount of liquid under the ice.
    There’s good evidence that Mars was once completely covered in similar ice, and because of it’s proximity to the sun, it’s once thicker atmosphere and volume has blown away with the solar wind.
    All that’s left is the ice caps.

    If there was liquid under the ice slushing around with every rotation, it would explain why there’s no shoreline, (except maybe the cliffs that’s around some of the volcanoes) and extreme erosion of the canyons and bare rock formations that wind alone cannot explain, especially in a low density atmosphere.
    As the liquid under the ice froze, becoming glacier, it was just a matter time before it all evaporated away and left the planet… Except for what sunk deep below the sand.
    Perhaps there wasn’t much water that was liquid, much of the impact craters survived except in the northern hemisphere.
    Just guessing with a lot of imagination…

    By the way, Zhurong went to hibernation a year ago and hasn’t woken up… It might be dead.

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