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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.

 

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North Korean missile launch fails

Does this make you feel safer? An attempt by North Korea to test a ballistic missile launched from a mobile platform failed seconds after launch today.

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

7 comments

  • pzatchok

    Does it make me feel safer?

    No.

    Does the short pudgy one make me feel less safe? No.

    One nuclear missile fired into any nation other than his and NK becomes Asia’s newest glass factory.

  • D K Rögnvald Williams

    I imagine the N. Korean rockets scientists are having a sleepless night wondering which one will be executed.

  • Matt

    There is no real threat to USA by North Korea, it is only a political play, even the North Korea ruler is crazy enough to face thermonuclear extermination by US missiles as response to an assumed or proposed North Korean attack against USA with its few and small Hiroshima type nukes. There is an open question: Why do the USA adminstration and US media exaggerate the hazards so much?

  • pzatchok

    Its not the hazard to the US, its the hazard to our allies and the possible larger war it could start by restarting the Korean war.
    Which was for all intents and purposes a war with China.

    Pick any nation within 1000 miles of him and extrapolate what might happen if he even accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on them.

  • Wayne

    pzatchok : Good point.

  • Edward

    Pzatchok and Matt are seeing the larger picture. Although it may be nice to fantasize about nuking North Korea, the reality is that a thermonuclear — or even a nuclear — bomb would have terrible effects on our allies, South Korea and Japan. China would not react well, either.

    Added to that is the certainty that North Korea would invade South Korea (to nuke the troops on the border would be to cause tremendous damage to nearby Seoul, which would be the invasion’s first goal). Thus, North Korea has no fear that we will perform any preemptive strikes, and has little fear of any retaliatory nuclear strikes.

    For reasonable countries, nuclear weapons are a political tool, but they are extremely limited in their usefulness, because everyone knows that reasonable leaders would not use them except after their country was destroyed and there were no political ramifications left to worry about.

    Poor and unreasonable countries are able to use them in limited amounts, because they understand that only conventional weapons would be used in retaliation. Plus, they have little to lose. Their leaders are only the biggest fish in their small ponds but are tiny fish compared to the leaders of the great nations. However, actually starting hostilities would most likely end their reigns.

    There is even supposition that Iran may use nukes to wreak chaos for religious reasons, rather than political reasons, and may not care that their reign ends.

  • Matt

    I am sorry, I forgot an important “not” in my comment above. Corrected the text must be: “even the North Korea ruler is not crazy enough to face” ….. You may did note it.

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