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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.

 

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Mentour Pilot – SAS flight 751-the Gottröra Miracle

An evening pause: Hat tip Björn Larsson a.k.a. LocalFluff. who adds,

This stuff is more complicated than I thought. You could pick your favourite(!) airplane crash. The fantastic Hudson river landing for example. My favourite is this one, with a happy ending, because it crashed near to where I lived as a kid back then. The crash site, a potato field, was then locally called The Gottröra International Airport. Someone even put up a sign with that name at the bus stop nearby.

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

5 comments

  • Concerned

    Mentour pilot is really good, I’ve been subscribed to his YouTube channel for a while. He’s a real professional.

  • mpthompson

    Agreed regarding Mentour Pilot. I’ve been watching him for a few years now.

  • Localfluff

    I like how he describes how the crew handled it. Traditionally Swedish. A colleague pilot was transported as a passenger and enters the cockpit to help out with the check list when both engines had stopped. “So that you can concentrate on flying the thing”. Not much is said at all as the sound recording shows. Everyone knows what is to be done anyway, no point in talking about it. When the wheels hit the tree tops the pilot calmly informes ground control:
    “- This is SK751. We are crash landing now.”

    (Now I am adding stuff to make a joke, but then the pilot walked out of the broken hull and told the passengers that coffee is free now, the machine still works).

    I happened to live nearby when it happened. Some guy put up a sign on the bus stop next door reading:
    “Gottröra International Airport”. We could joke about it because everyone miraculously survived. It was Christmas time.

  • Jeff Wright

    I never liked the loss of the flight engineers. Bob Welsh cost cutting nonsense that hurt aviation.

  • Third (I think) for Mentour Pilot. The guy knows his stuff, and looks to keep up on the art.

    An amazing outcome. No deaths. A real credit to everyone involved.

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