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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.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

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.


Russia launches movie director and actor to ISS

Capitalism in space: Early today Russia successfully used its Soyuz-2 rocket and Soyuz capsule to launch a movie crew to ISS to begin a twelve day visit where they will film scenes for a science fiction movie.

An actress Yulia Peresild and a movie director Klim Shipenko arrived at the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft on Oct. 5, 2021, for a 12-day visit to shoot scenes of a sci-fi drama. They were accompanied by a professional cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who had to switch to manual control during the final approach to the station due to a failure of the Kurs automated rendezvous system aboard Soyuz. Shkaplerov will remain aboard the station for nearly six months.

This is the second in a steady string of passenger commercial spaceflights that have been purchased by various people from either Roscosmos in Russia or SpaceX in the U.S. We shall see two more such flights in December, and another early in ’22, with additional flights to be scheduled beyond that. The full list, at this time:

  • September 15, 2021: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule flew four private citizens on a three day orbital flight
  • October 2021: The Russians launch two passengers to ISS for 12 days to shoot a movie
  • December 2021: The Russians will fly billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant to ISS for 12 days
  • cDecember 2021: Space Adventures, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four in orbit for five days
  • January/February 2022: Axiom, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four tourists to ISS
  • 2022-2024: Three more Axiom tourist flights on Dragon to ISS
  • 2024: Axiom begins launching its own modules to ISS, starting construction of its own private space station
  • c2024: SpaceX’s Starship takes Yusaku Maezawa and several others on a journey around the Moon.

Expect this list to grow. There appears to be plenty of demand for such commercial manned spaceflights, and with more flights and more competition (once Boeing’s Starliner enters the game) the cost will certainly drop.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

34 China
23 SpaceX
16 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

With this launch Russia has now exceeded the number of launches it completed last year. If they complete all their presently scheduled launches for ’21, Roscosmos will have its best year since 2015.

The U.S still leads China 35 to 34 in the national rankings.

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

2 comments

  • Michael

    Somewhere around MA-7 who’d a thunk?

  • Ray Van Dune

    “… (once Boeing’s Starliner enters the game) the cost will certainly drop.”

    Yeah, even I could “afford” it then, since they’d have to pay me bigtime to go on any early Starliner!

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