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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
 
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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.


November 25, quick space links

3:21 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

  • Landspace touts upgrades it is planning for its Zhuque-3 rocket
    It hopes to do the first three launches in 2025 using the older version, and then upgrade. A comparison of its Zhuque-2 and Zhuque-3 rockets can be viewed here. Zhuque-2 has launched three times successfully, though nothing in the past year. Zhuque-3 will attempt to reuse its first stage.

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

5 comments

  • Richard M
    November 25, 2024 at 5:36 pm

    Jeff Foust tonight has a news story of special interest to Behind the Black readers: an update on the three commercial spaceflight companies planning to send landers to the Moon in the coming weeks. The bad news is, they all slipped from 4Q 2024 to 1Q 2025. But the good news is, the slips are pretty small, and seem to be due to a typical mix of last minute testing delays and launch schedule issues. (They are all launching on Falcon 9’s, of course). That’s right: three Western missions are going to the lunar surface shortly, and not one of them is owned by a government (though governments are among the customers with payloads on board each of ’em). And they are all launching on commercially owned rockets!

    Firefly Aerospace says it is planning a launch of its first lunar lander mission in January, meaning that none of the three commercial lander missions once slated to launch in the fourth quarter of this year will do so.

    Firefly announced Nov. 25 that it is planning to launch its Blue Ghost 1 lander mission during a six-day window in mid-January. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Florida.

    …At one point this fall, as many as three commercial lunar lander missions were slated to launch in the fourth quarter of the year, but now none of them will do so. Japanese company ispace announced Nov. 12 in an earnings release for its fiscal second quarter that its Mission 2 lunar lander, once projected to launch in December, is now planned for launch no earlier than January. Like Firefly, the lander will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9.

    Intuitive Machines, which had been targeting a launch in December or early January for its IM-2 mission, announced in a Nov. 14 earnings call that the mission is now scheduled to launch no earlier than February on a Falcon 9. The company did not disclose a reason for the slip.

    https://spacenews.com/firefly-sets-january-launch-date-for-first-lunar-lander-mission/

    So the first 6 weeks or so of 2025 should be exciting for lunar activity, at any rate.

  • Richard M
    November 25, 2024 at 6:28 pm

    Speaking of SpaceX launches, they just landed a contract for a big one today!

    NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Dragonfly mission, a rotorcraft lander mission under NASA’s New Frontiers Program, designed to explore Saturn’s moon Titan. The mission will sample materials and determine surface composition in different geologic settings, advancing our search for the building blocks of life.

    The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $256.6 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The Dragonfly mission currently has a targeted launch period from July 5, 2028, to July 25, 2028, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. …

    Full press release: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-launch-services-contract-for-dragonfly-mission/

    That price is almost exactly what SpaceX is charging for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, by the way. A lot of special payload processing requirements for both of these. (It is worth noting that Dragonfly is powered by an MMRTG, making this the first nuclear payload SpaceX has ever launched.)

  • wayne
    November 26, 2024 at 1:18 pm

    “Watching a Rocket Launch at SpaceX with Elon Musk”
    Kai Trump
    https://youtu.be/ytrtFsXRXGY?t=165

  • Jeff Wright
    November 26, 2024 at 3:27 pm

    Today’s phys.org had a story called “Earth bound asteroids could be tracked more precisely with new equation” by Oscar de Barco

    Coming from the “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.”

    DOI:10.1093/mnras/stae2277

  • Dick Eagleson
    November 26, 2024 at 8:49 pm

    Jeff Wright,

    Future Want Ad:

    Seeking Celestial Mechanic. Must have own tools.

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