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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.
 

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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.


On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.

On Friday an astronaut on ISS controlled and steered a rover on Earth.

While zipping around Earth several hundred miles above the planet’s surface, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano drove a 220-pound (100 kilograms) rover across a moon-mimicking landscape here at NASA’s Ames Research Center, even ordering the robot to deploy a simulated film-based radio telescope antenna.

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

4 comments

  • Pzatchok

    I thought we already did this from planet to planet. You know, the mars rovers.

    Why is NASA wasting time and money trying to prove something they already know works?

  • This experiment was not quite the same as controlling a rover on Mars from JPL on Earth. Having an astronaut do it on ISS means the infrastructure the astronaut uses has to be much simpler than that on Earth, much more portable and lightweight so it can get to ISS. To achieve that is important engineering that must be learned.

    Thus, I wouldn’t dismiss this test as a waste.

  • Pzatchok

    So they built a full size rover and moon simulation test range just to test a new digital transceiver?

    They didn’t need the moon simulation area or the actual remote control car. They could have tested the radio by just monitoring its digital input/output.

    Everything else was off the shelf stuff used everyday all day.

    I can see testing the radio. But going through the extra expense of making full size operational mock-ups and running it around on a full size simulated moon is a bit over the top.
    Unless they already had the robot and moon mock-up sitting around unused then I retract my opinion.

    But so far all I see is a few engineers putting together a big test just to make their work look more important than it really is.

  • Robert Clark

    Purpose of this is to show astronauts in orbit above the Moon could control robots producing propellant on the Moon. But to transport that propellant up to orbit you would need landers/ascent vehicles. Then why not make those landers also able to carry a crew module?

    Bob Clark

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