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Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, 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. 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. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally 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.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. 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.

 

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Rogozin to take over Roscosmos?

I wonder if he used a trampoline: Less than a week after Putin dumped Dmitry Rogozin from his cabinet, a story in the Russian press suggests he has been offered the job as head of Roscosmos.

Under the government-run centralized Russian system, it would not surprise me if Rogozin gets this job. With the government, no one ever gets fired, they merely get shuffled about from one job to another. Results are irrelevant.

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

4 comments

  • “With the government, no one ever gets fired, they merely get shuffled about from one job to another. Results are irrelevant.”

    By way of illustration, I wrote some years ago on the effort by Portland to sell the Portland Loo to other cities (the Loo is a stand-alone public toilet). The person in charge of the effort stated that she didn’t really see her job as selling the Loo. I believe two were sold. A few years later, she was put in charge of the newly-created Portland Office of Healthy Working Rivers. That bureaucracy was dissolved after a couple of years (apparently government projects *can* die). I don’t know what she does now, but for several years she made a good living doing essentially nothing.

  • wayne

    “Rutherford unperson, substitute Olgivey. Olgivey bio to follow…”
    1984 (1984) excerpt
    https://youtu.be/gmY_bniRT2U
    1:27

  • Noah Peal

    Meet new boss; same as old boss.

  • Localfluff

    The employees’ reaction:
    “- Rogozin fired as deputy minister for space.”
    – Yeay Hurray! Happy days are here again!

    “- Rogozin is installed as chief inspector for the Russian space program.”
    – I got a new job on the Mongolian railway. Shipping is shipping anyway, horizontal or vertical is same same. Not that we’re going anywhere new. Sad.

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