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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent independent analysis you don’t find elsewhere. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn’t influenced by donations by established companies or political movements. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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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On the road

I am presently in Columbus, Ohio and will be in Dayton, Ohio tomorrow to give the keynote speech at the 44th Dayton-Cincinnati Aerospace Sciences Symposium, sponsored by the Dayton-Cincinnati section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The topic will the Apollo 8 mission and how it changed the world.

Thus, posting tomorrow will likely be spotty.

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

8 comments

  • wayne

    Hey Bob–
    I see it’s like’ 6 degrees in Dayton tonight! Similar coldness in W. Michigan. Hope you dressed warm!

  • Matt in AZ

    Any chance you’ll be fitting in a visit to the National Museum of the USAF on this trip? I grew up in Dayton, and never got tired of visiting the place. Yes I’m biased, but it may be the best aerospace museum in the world.

    https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/

  • mkent

    “…Yes I’m biased, but it may be the best aerospace museum in the world.”

    I have no ties to Ohio, so I’m not biased, ;-) and I’ll say the AF museum is the second-best aerospace museum in the world, behind only the Smithsonian Air & Space museum. It truly is a wonder. You can start at a Wright Flyer replica and proceed chronologically through the development of flight into the modern age. The experimental hangar is aerospace heaven — truly a wondrous, awe-inspiring experience.

    And if you’re truly an airplane geek, be sure to check out Huffman Prairie. There’s not much there visually — just a path and some detailed signs — but that is the site where the Wright Brothers truly worked out the science of aviation. Not much to see — so your guests may be bored — but that is where man first learned how to fly.

    Dangit, now I want to go back.

  • Noah Peal

    Will an audio record or transcript be available to the general public?

  • Noah Peal: Nope, not this time. However, will be giving the same presentation in Knoxville in April and then again in Huntville in July. Details to be posted on BtB shortly. Come and see it live!

  • wayne

    Columbus is actually a nice place (over-all), but have only ever visited on antiquing-specific trips, so spent most of our time in the hinterland looking for stone & dinnerware.
    -They do have the Ohio Railway Museum just north of the city.

    If we are taking a vote; I’d nominate the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry as a particularly good museum. As well, impressed with the Boston Museum of Science.

    >Dayton weather.
    https://www.accuweather.com/en/us/dayton-oh/45402/weather-forecast/330120

  • wayne

    Let’s go for a drive, shall we?….

    Columbus, Ohio
    [ Interstate 70, Interstate 670, and Ohio St Rt 315 North]
    The Highwayman
    (Music by Alan Parsons project)
    https://youtu.be/VIW7toPPb6U
    4:14

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