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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. 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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NASA Awards Next Set Of Commercial Crew Development Agreements

NASA has awarded the next set of commercial crew development agreements, giving contracts worth from $22 to $92 million to four companies, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, and Boeing. More here and here.

The amounts that NASA is giving these companies is minuscule, compared the monies spent on the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Yet I bet they all get their rockets/capsules launched and in operation, supplying cargos and crews to low Earth orbit, before NASA even test fires its heavy-lift rocket.

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

2 comments

  • Take a look at the SpaceX milestones (they’re not redacted).

    You’ll discover 10 milestones for some crew cabin comfort testing (which SpaceX is paying for out of their own pocket) and a single Launch Abort System test. 6 of the 10 milestones are design reviews. There’s more paperwork than work.

  • К комментарию Grom.Напрасно вы спрашиваете copmran.Он отвечает только тогда, когда ему выгодно.На одном комментарии admin дал неполную ссылку на сайт copmran.Я потратил время, но нашел этот сайт.Это даже не сайт, а статические страницы, на которых не нашел ни одного доказательства НИ ОДНОГО пребывания американцев на Луне.Перечисляются все астронавты, есть их фото, словом всё то, чем грешат защитники .Нет только одного.Хоть одного более или менее доказательства.Но убило меня на этих убогих страницах не сам текст, а то, что нельзя это, хоть как-то прокомментировать.Я это понимаю, господин copmran. Это вы не любите.Ведь, дай вы прокомментировать эти странички, то от этих цветных фото со временем, от комментариев сразу слезет показной лоск.А вы copmran критику не любите, хотя сами на сайтах кричите о НАСА во всю ивановскую. У вас уважаемый оказывается двойные стандарты.И знаете что, не стоит вам мне отвечать, ведь ваши ответы для меня предсказуемые, как и ваш убогий сайт (если это можно так назвать).Вы мне не интересны с точки зрения оппонента. Несколько стандартных клише Вот ваш стиль. Это убого.

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