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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


October 11, 2024 Quick space links

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, except for the first, which came from several readers. 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.

  • ISRO has booked all the remaining flights of its GSLV rocket
    To quote the tweet: “Within the next decade, both PSLV & GSLV are going to retire, after which India’s launch demands are to be met by SSLV, LVM3, NGLV & private launchers.” The best plan would be to replace all the government launchers with private ones, but that seems unlikely considering the political strength of India’s bureaucracy.

The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.

 

Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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7 comments

  • Richard M

    1. I always thought it was neat that as soon as we discovered Neptune, we also discovered that it had a Moon!

    We are way overdue to pay it a follow-up visit.

    2. Christian Davenport just tweeted out that he is hearing that an FAA license for Starship Flight 5 could be granted tomorrow. Meanwhile, Elon is tweeting that Flight 5 will be flying on Sunday, along with shots of a ginormous American flag flying from Orbital Pad B’s tower. Sounds like the dam is ready to burst.

    https://x.com/wapodavenport/status/1844866815073173579
    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1844840205486043138

  • Brewingfrog

    The estimable Mr. Berger ought to know why Texas doesn’t slide into the Gulf…

  • Jeff Wright

    To Richard M

    Wasn’t Triton once thought to be larger than Ganymede?

  • Dick Eagleson

    Richard M,

    I congratulate Mr. Davenport on the acuity of his hearing.

    Jeff Wright,

    Triton was thought to be just a bit larger than Ganymede when I was a grade-schooler. Of course Mercury was thought to be tidally locked to the Sun, Venus was thought to have an Earth-tropics surface climate and Jupiter was thought to have 12 moons, Saturn 9 and Pluto none. Science marches on.

    To all,

    Good move on the part of Starlab Space to get Luca Parmitano as one of the astronaut-evaluators of its interior space station mockup. As the Primo Carnera of human spaceflight, Parmitano is, himself, an ergonomic edge case. His insights should prove invaluable.

  • Richard M

    Jeff,

    Yeah, my experience was the same as Dick’s, despite being younger — that’s what I first “learned” about Triton in school, too, when I was memorizing planets and moons. The trouble was due to Gerard Kuiper, who was the first astronomer to attempt to estimate a diameter for Triton. He came up with roughly 3,700km. It wasn’t until Voyager 2’s approach in 1989 that we figured out that it was rather smaller than that (though still a pretty big moon, obviously).

    Still very much worth visiting again, though given how long even a Starship launch would take to get a probe there, I fear we are *all* going to be quite old before that happens, if indeed we live to see it.

  • Question for the Assembled Masses: Precisely what was the anomaly from the Upper Stage Merlin? Early light? Late light? And then what did SpaceX do to fix it? Cheers –

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