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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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Peeling thin layers on a Martian plateau

Peeling thin layers on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on May 14, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels as “light-toned layered deposits.”

Their focus, rightly from a geologist’s perspective, is the contrast in color between different layers, suggesting different composition and thus a different formation history for each layer.

To me, what made this feature appealing is the thinness and number of its layers. It reminded me of fillo pastry, “unleavened flour dough formed into very thin sheets or leaves.”

If you look at the full image you will see that cropped section only covers one edge of a tongue-shaped plateau, with similar layers revealed along its entire cliff wall. It is almost like those layers have been peeling off for eons to leave the plateau behind.

The location below gives some context.

Overview map

The image, marked by the white cross, is in what is called Ladon Basin, an outlet drainage valley [pdf] that poured northward into the resurgences that came out of Valles Marineris. Here scientists have found many features suggesting strong flows which they assume at present to have been catastrophic floods, though this remains unproven.

In the above image, the downhill grade is to the north. You can also see that grade in the small eroding drainage hollow in the image itself. If a catastrophic flood poured over this at some time in the past, it eroded material away to the north.

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

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

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Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

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