October 8, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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 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
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 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
As a side note, since I listen Mr Batchelor nightly and always to the segments featuring Bob, I’ve learned what his voice sounds like. So when I read what he has posted, my mind makes it to be in his voice. Anyone else have this effect?
As far as the resolution of US recon satellites goes, I have heard that Hubble is essentially a Keyhole recon bird pointed up rather than down
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN
Col Beausabre: That is not exactly correct about Hubble. While much of the technology to develop both Hubble and the Keyhole surveillance satellites were similar, developed somewhat in parallel, their goals are very different.
The surveillance satellites look down on a very bright Earth whose surface is moving quite fast relative to the camera. They need to resolve sharply bright objects that are relatively large.
Hubble looks at very distant and extremely faint objects, moving slow relative to the camera. If Hubble looked down at the Earth it would not see anything but an over-exposed blur.
Hey Bob – any way you could attach to your Zimmerman/ Batchelor Posts something to the effect of “ I encourage my readers to tune into his Radio show or visit the John Batchelor Audioboom site to sample other interesting conversations. John has been a supporter of Behind the Black since 2004’, Just a friendly suggestion as I think only a handful of your readers have admitted that they are Batchelor fans (such as Col Beausabre and Gary).
Here I wanted to give a detailed shout out of appreciation to John Batchelor for promoting our Mr. Z. and other interesting regular guests. I would encourage all readers to at least once a week go to the Batchelor site which has a variety of interesting conversations. If like me you don’t tune into terrestrial radio, you can find the conversations on the interwebs by searching on ‘John Batchelor AudioBoom’. Everybody has different tastes, but besides Bob, some of the conversations I enjoy involve Michael Vlahos, Josh Rogin, Salerno Zita, Daniel Heniger, Gregory Copley, Conrad Black, Gordon Chang, John Fund, Mary Kissel, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Simon Constable, H. J. Mackinder, and various guest from the FDD. If your immediate thought is that you do not have the time for that, then I recommend listening while you do chores (Bob’s audience is tilted to the farther end of the IQ Bell curve so I know you can walk and chew gum at that same time).
This week specifically I enjoyed listening to Bradley Bowman from FDD. He had an interesting take on the whole Biden administration’s snub of France regarding the US/UK/Australia nuclear sub deal. if you listen to it you’ll get details you wouldn’t read in our lame national media, and as a side note learn how this situation affected Lockheed.in a round about way.
Lastly if you haven’t already tuned out because your engineering trained mind taught you to dislike a non engineers’ verbosity, references to popular culture, and use of metaphorical language, I just wanted to explain the background behind my recent sarcastic joke that I made on Bob’s Oct 8th post regarding the naming of the new Dragon capsule. The punchline to my joke was “I predict one of the ‘October Surprises’ for 2024 will be the unveiling of the 10th SpaceX’s new Dragon capsule which will be named “Let’s Go Brandon””. As I posted before, I believe one tool we have against our governing elites is in your face mockery. This current administration has been condescendingly dismissive of Elon Musk and SpaceX only because he doesn’t completely align with their fascist based Big Government/ Big Business model. Here are two examples. Tesla was not invited to the recent White House Convo on the National push for electric based vehicles. Then there was the situation where the White House completely ignored the accomplishment of SpaceX’s first private manned orbital mission in space. Bob effusively posted at the time that Sept 15th will mark the beginning of “The Real Human Exploration of the Solar System”. But the cold hearted and ideologically driven White House saw no need to give praise to, or even acknowledge the accomplishment of SpaceX, the all American civilian flight crew, and the feel good story of millions of dollars raised for the St. Jude Charity.
Anyways back to my joke, if you don’t know why ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ is now a populist rallying cry, it goes back an incident on October 2 at a NASCAR race where a mainstream media reporter was conducting the post race interview with the race’s winner Brandon Brown. During the interview, NASCAR fans were using derogatory language in their anti-Biden chant, which while crude is still first amendment protected political speech. That original chant is NSFW and since I follow Mr. Z’s rules I can’t repeat it here.
The reporter mischaracterized the chant as ‘Let’s go Brandon!’ and that clip went super viral on social media.
I predict over time the crude chant will be replaced by the tamer but more sarcastic “Let’s Go Brandon”. I plan on buying a shirt or two with that phrase on it.
For those who have actually read to the end of this comment I wish you all a great weekend. And Mr. Z., yesterday you admitted to having an off day in regards to posting, so you can feel free to repost all or portions of my comment here under the heading “Most Interesting non technical Comment of the Week” (just trying to get a chuckle out of you to raise your spirits after your harrowing dental experience).
Mark: Actually, I am ashamed I haven’t linked to Batchelor’s site on all my embedded podcast posts. I will now do so.
I am a Bachelor fan since the last of September 2001, when I first caught him DX on AM Radio in Virginia from WABC in NYC.